Recording amp reverb?

[BillC15]

I always thought recording reverb or fast delay coming from a miked amp amp was a big no no when you want to fill space with a guitar in a mix, because it creates a mono reverb in the mix instead of stereo. However, I was recording at a local studio over the past week and the producer had the other guitarist use a holy grail reverb pedal (which is mono) and his line six delay modeler along with a boss dd-3 in his signal chain to the amp, and when I listened back after he tweaked it, it was completely filling both speakers. I thought he was using some sort of mono to stereo enhancer plugin, so I asked him what he did and he said all he had on it was a stereo reverb send. Does anyone else here record reverb/delay from an amp, and if so, do you process it like this? How else do you make it fill up space?

 

[Rokket]

Rules are made to be broken. I have always been told that you track dry unless the effect is needed for a particular piece (like a wah effect on a guitar solo). What gets printed stays on the track.

And if I am reading your last question right then what I do is double track the guitars (sometimes 2 or 3 per side), and pan them to fill up the space.

 

[89gtsleeper]

OK, well I have a few suggestions on ways to produce some different stereo signals. Granted, each way will produce a little bit different effect, but will fill out the sound.

1) When you record the guitar amp, mic it twice. Once with a dynamic up close on the speaker, and also with a condensor anywhere from 5-20 feet out in front of the amp to capture the room sound. Once the tracks are recorded, pan the close-mic signal where you would want the guitar in the song. Then pan the room mic all the way left or right (which ever is farther from the panning of the close mic). Turn the volume all the way down on the room mic, then as you listen to the track, slowly bring the room mic's volume up in the mix and you'll start to hear the space fill up slowly but surely. However, if the playing is very technical and needs to sound very clear and precise, this method may not be right for you. It could come across pretty muddy.

2) Record your guitar signal as you normally would with only one mic. Then, copy the guitar track to a separate channel. Now put a reverb plugin on the copy with the "mix" control set to 100% (so that track is nothing but reverb). If you don't have a mix control,it may be labeled as wet/dry. You want the dry all the way down and the wet all the way up. Pan your reverb track all the way to one side, and adjust the track's volume to suit your needs.

3) Record the initial guitar track directly, with no mic. Then reamp the DI signal through your amp with various amounts of amp reverb. Doing it this way, you can dial in the reverb on the amp so it still sounds natural and is the sound of real air moving across a mic, but you don't have to worry about getting it dialed in on the first try. Depending on your system though, this may give you latency issues and could be a hassle if you are unsure of how to correct the issue.

 

[Dani Pace]

No one says you can't record reverb (or any other effects) on the way in. The only real problem is that if the effect isn't right to start with, there isn't any way to fix it other than redo the track. An important thing to remember is, reverb comes across on a recording stronger than you might expect. Like with gain, dial the reverb down to about half of what you would use for a live setting and you should be alright, if you need more it's easy to add with a plug in.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Rules are made to be broken. I have always been told that you track dry unless the effect is needed for a particular piece (like a wah effect on a guitar solo). What gets printed stays on the track.

No one says you can't record reverb (or any other effects) on the way in. The only real problem is that if the effect isn't right to start with, there isn't any way to fix it other than redo the track.

Rules are made to be broken by those qualified to break them.

In this case, the "rule" - really more wise advice than a "rule" - about recording dry and applying effects later is meant as an answer for those who have to ask the question. That is, if you're unsure enough about what you're doing to have to ask others what they do or what to do, then the best advice is to leave yourself an out by recording dry, otherwise there is too big of a risk of recording something other than what you really want and being stuck with it.

Once you are familiar enough with the situation to not to have to ask or to be unsure of the results - if it's a procedure you've already done several times and you just plain pretty much know how it's going to come out, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with recording wet out of the gate. That's not "breaking the rule", because the "rule" does not apply in that situation.

Breaking it down: If you're unsure, play it safe. If you're sure, then do it.

Getting back to the OP, if I understand your description right, the TE actually had two stages of reverb going; there was the amp reverb first, and then that was being further fed into a stereo reverb on an aux send.

What that says to me is that the amp reverb was a "sound" he knew he wanted; i.e. he wanted the sound of an electric guitar sent through an amp reverb, and then he wanted to take that sound and "place it in the room" and the mix with the stereo reverb. Two different effects for two different reasons being used simultaneously.

If that's the case, then the amp reverb was, as Rocket put it "necessary for the piece"; i.e. the engineer knew he needed/wanted that sfx sound no matter what, as a sound, so there were no "rules" broken. In fact, he then ran it through the stereo reverb on an FX aux send, allowing him to record/mix the stereo reverb separately from the guitar, leaving him that out, that flexibility called for by "the rule", so he really was playing by "the rule" all along.

G.

 

[nate_dennis]

What that says to me is that the amp reverb was a "sound" he knew he wanted; i.e. he wanted the sound of an electric guitar sent through an amp reverb, and then he wanted to take that sound and "place it in the room"

Great explanaition, I was totally lost on this thread till you said that. Thanks.


Now for my $.02 on printing effects. . . .

For those of us with less than golden ears, and less than "state-of-the-art" home studios, sometimes printing effects is exactly what we should be doing. Knowing how something sounds/will sound before overdubbing can be invaluable. So, with the exception of "placed in a room reverb" I tend to print most of my effects. This helps me to make informed decisions down the line. Yes, I forfeit some flexibility later, but I believe that it helps me to make better decisions, and ultimately, better recordings. Just a thought.

 

[Rokket]

Great explanaition, I was totally lost on this thread till you said that. Thanks.


Now for my $.02 on printing effects. . . .

For those of us with less than golden ears, and less than "state-of-the-art" home studios, sometimes printing effects is exactly what we should be doing. Knowing how something sounds/will sound before overdubbing can be invaluable. So, with the exception of "placed in a room reverb" I tend to print most of my effects. This helps me to make informed decisions down the line. Yes, I forfeit some flexibility later, but I believe that it helps me to make better decisions, and ultimately, better recordings. Just a thought.

The only problem I see with printing the reverb is matching the other instruments to it later on. If each instrument has a different reverb on it, won't the resulting mix sound like they are not in the same room? In other words, it won't sound cohesive...

 

[nate_dennis]

absolutely. That's why I said that "in-the-room reverb" i do add later later on. But you are absolutely right.