Recording clean? Digital distortion?

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michael_lifshit

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I was thinking, since I dont have a very good amp with nice distortion or anything, wouldn't it make sense for me to record clean, and add reverb and distortion digitally on the computer? I was thinking that all those pedals and such would all be digital anyways, so it seems like it would make sense and work. I tried playing around with some free vst plugins but couldnt get a nice tone.

Is this reccomended or not?

And does anyone have reccomendations for a nice free vst amp? Im having some trouble finding a versatile distortion simulator, though I have found a plug in for just about everything else.
 
with my experience, none of the tones i ever got felt "real"... no real crunch or IN YOUR FACE kind of tone. my gear wasn't the best back then, so that could have been the problem, but i still would rather mic up a cab.
 
Hmm, yeah, the problem being that I dont like the distorted tones my crappy little amp gives out. But its clean tone is not so bad. So I figure something digital would be better. I just dont know where to find anything decent.
 
michael_lifshit said:
Hmm, yeah, the problem being that I dont like the distorted tones my crappy little amp gives out. But its clean tone is not so bad. So I figure something digital would be better. I just dont know where to find anything decent.
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Do you own any distortion pedals? Try some of the tube pedals. They are a bit pricey, but worth the money IMO.
 
you would be distorting an already amplified (through a speaker) and micced tone, so it would just sound like you overloaded the recorder
 
Its true. I guess I will just do this as a very temporary solution until I do get a new amp, hopefully soon.
 
If you're gonna try doing this, at least D.I. the guitar instead of micing your amp. It will probably sound better than your previosly mentioned method. Obviously, for the cleans you would just mic up your amp.
 
I think I decided to pretty much just live with my amp and not do anything digitally afterwards because you guys are right, it sounds better. I figure that I like my amp's distortion when its very lightly distorted anyways, so I will jsut stick to light distortion until I get a new amp, which should be soon anyways.

Thanks for all the help.
 
I'd suggest recording clean and then adding the effects/plug-ins.

otherwise if you play the solo of you life but don't like the effects you had in the chain you're SOL

having said that, I understand the difficulty in playing clean and trying to imagine sustain and crunch....

Stainless
Sacramento
 
I agree that D.I recording distorted guitars just doesn't compare to mic'ing a cab, but if you are limited you can try recording one track DI and another with a mic, then blend the two. It mic take a little tweaking, but it might give you a fuller sound.
 
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