recording electric at low(ish) volume

[daav]

OK, recently set up a sm57 -> soundcraft M4 pres -> layla 24/96 to play around with some tracks.

Guitar chain is (most often) either SG classic or 335 knock off to fender blues deluxe -> atenuator -> avatar 1 x 12 cab (with hellatone, that is, Celestian vintage 30).

Trying to find a clean tone that is not so loud that my wife upstairs gets too awfully annoyed with hearing me play the same thing 1000 times that i am not good enough to get right the first time.


So at practice levels, basically about as loud as i would play music by myself (i.e way too loud to have conversation over, but not so loud you couldn't yell over it), i get a reasonable recorded signal that ranges from -12 to -6 on the software input meters. result: really thin tone, it IS what is coming out of the speaker, but no presence, oomf whatever you want to call it. I crank the volume up to where i am more comfortabel playing with closed back headphones on and monitoring through the mixer/software and it sounds pretty good.

looking for some suggestions to help frame my experiments to try to get that tone. I have a bunch of mic options RE27, audix i5, senn e409, oktava 319, group buy ACM 4 (ribbon), group buy 6802T, soon will have a couple group buy 1200's and the acm-84 preamps. I also have a dmp3 for preamp options.

I am wonderig if the ribbon or one of the LDCs might be better for this?

Daav

 

[antichef]

I'd work with placement with the 57 first - I don't use a 57, but not because it's too thin, rather because it's too "honky" (something like that).

That said, I pretty much just use the ACM-4 for clean guitar these days. I have a Lundahl transformer in mine, but it was pretty good before that (here's a before/after comparison: http://www.recursor.net/blosxom.cgi/music/ribbonmic.writeback ). It's conceivable that you could have phasy issues if the two ribbons are discombobulated, but that was never the case for me.

But in any case, placement is king

 

[daav]

I'd work with placement with the 57 first - I don't use a 57, but not because it's too thin, rather because it's too "honky" (something like that).

That said, I pretty much just use the ACM-4 for clean guitar these days. I have a Lundahl transformer in mine, but it was pretty good before that (here's a before/after comparison: http://www.recursor.net/blosxom.cgi/music/ribbonmic.writeback ). It's conceivable that you could have phasy issues if the two ribbons are discombobulated, but that was never the case for me.

But in any case, placement is king

Thanks for the info, i have moved the 57 around alot. I just think it seems to have a better overall signal when pushed a bit, or maybe i will find that there is a threshold of volume for recording that needs to be met and i am jsut too low. This is good experimentation shuff to work on for sure.

Any thoughts on different results from the pre? Maybe if i put it through the DMP3 for now, and then into the mixer so i have a little extra gain to add, as it is the mixers pre is pretty close to dimed to get the signal i have.

daav

 

[zazz]

i have a blues junior but i would never dream of cranking that up for long sessions...the neighbours would kill me...

so i have a roland mircrocube...does me well...and as jimmy page would say a small amp throttled sounds better than a larger amp just ticking over.

 

[daav]

i have a blues junior but i would never dream of cranking that up for long sessions...the neighbours would kill me...

so i have a roland mircrocube...does me well...and as jimmy page would say a small amp throttled sounds better than a larger amp just ticking over.

Well that is the reason it got the attenuator, I have a blues JR too, and I can dime it and dial the attenuator down to mellow listneing volume, generally has much better tone that what i would have to do to get the amp at the same volume. I doubt i will go solid state again at any time, and this is a great compromise.

My problem is that now i am afraid that even then i need to dial back on the attenuator (making the volume near-daefening) to get that great tone onto a recorded track. Hopefully this is me flailing though and with some experimentation i will get something usable.

Daav

 

[cavedog101]

Put the 409 on it and be happy. Get it as close to the cone as you can. Taking the grill off helps a lot for this.

 

[Milnoque]

Try diming the amp and using the volume control on the guitar instead of the attenuator.