Recording Fender Pro junior

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kip4

kip4

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Ok heres the deal i got a new amp but shoot its loud.
Now i could record it at bedroom level but i'm not getting the best tones out of it until its way louder.
I was thinking of sticking a 57 infront of it.
I'll have to record it when im alone in the house in the day or the wife will freak.
I think what i might do is put it in the much larger main room in the house and mic it there.

Will a 40-50 foot mic cable degrade the mic signal?
Should i get a long guitar cable and sit in the studio and monitor from there or is it possible to go wireless (bug) and not lose signal. And will it work given that
theres 2 walls between the studio and the room.
will i pick up RF signals with a bug.
How am i going to get round this.
Ideas please.
mic preamp is Alice mic pak so im confident with 72db of gain that shouldnt be a problem.
 
Hey, Kip.

Long mic leads are fine because they're balanced, but long guitar leads might not be a great idea.
Try it and see though. It depends on the environment a lot.

Maybe you could make an isobox like Grim, if you're stuck?
 
that occured to me too Steeno and also a power soaker hhhmmm
dya think a wireless system will work?
 
You'd have to experiment with the R/F system but you might get interference or latency.
 
what about if i keep the amp in the studio and a seperate cab in my room with the mic. ? will a long speaker cable degrade the signal or suck my tone?
 
Gritty Nits:...
A 400foot mic cable would not degrade the sound (well, might lose a dB or 2 at 20kHz but since guitar speakers "stop" about 3 octaves below that???)

A 40foot speaker cable (in 6amp "garden orange" e.g.) would not degrade the sound a gnat's wedding tackle but some transistor amps, older, cheaper ones, might go instable.

A GUITAR cable more than about 5mtrs will start to rob you of HF at a low enough frequency to be a problem but hum and possible RFI could be an even greater nuisance. One solution to this is a pedal designed to drive long cables with very low HF loss and having a very "transparent" unity gain buffered bypass stage. See top right for ideas(cough!)

Lastly, have you thought of a speaker attenuator aka power soak? These can cut levels to 80-90dBSPL, still loudish but not window threatening, no louder than a good vocalist or a well hit acoustic. You can have soaks that cut to whisper, microwatt levels but this WILL screw your tone.
BTW do not believe the old saw that you need to drive a speaker to within a nanometre of failure to get a good guitar sound. Ain't so. Celestions said so!

Google for the Aug 07 issue of sound on sound for THE dissertation on recording gitcabs.

Dave.
 
Thanks for the help Dave.
I have no intention of dimeing it. I can get a good enough distortion sounds with nice saturation that will sit well in a mix upto about 4 (9 oclock) Vol. Its just that its so dammed loud it rattles shit in the studio. So i was thinking of putting a speaker cab in a bigger room and putting some gobos round it and put it on a stand for isolation that way i can control the amp from my studio chair.

I have thought about power soaks and that maybe an option for the future but so far im not that impressed with what i've heard on you tube. they seem to suck the life out of the tone and for my ears if the speakers not pushing enough air that something just aint there i may as well use a sim.
Not that i have a problem with amp sims i've been happy with em so far but since i have now got my first real tube amp and it just comes alive at volumes which are excessive when other people are in the house. I'm trying to gather ideas and yours ARE helpful.
Have you got any reccomendations re power soaks?
The best ones i heard so far are the weber mass ones.
 
By garden orange i guess you mean a twin core mains type cable designed for non earthed appliances?
 
kip4 said:
By garden orange i guess you mean a twin core mains type cable designed for non earthed appliances?
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Yes, that's the stuff. Your other points...

Let's get one thing clear. If you only get the tone you want and the playing "feel" at the higher volume, then that is it, you must record at that level, everything else is a compromise. If you feed the amp into another type of speaker it is going to sound differently...Shoot" Even if you put the Fender chassis in the control room and the combo cab in the studio the extra cab volume sans chassis will affect the sound!

'Tis the Holy Grail of the rock guitarist/recordist to put a brandX 100W stack in a matchbox and plug it into a desk. You can't do it for bagpipes or a brass band, why should guitarists be any luckier? But "we" * ARE luckier, far more so than those acoustic people. There are power soaks and pedals and isoboxes. Yes I have heard good things of the Weber mass...And bad! Much depends it seems on the amp. Go talk to Musicradar.com Then, for a trifling single ended 5watter you can make a soak in ten minutes with a 10W load R and tinkering with other values.

*I am no player but I have spent a great deal of time with my son who is a very good one and a fussy B when it comes to his "tone"!

Last point of pedantry. Sound does not "move" air. There is no net force unless you get to an SPL that is a fair fraction of the static 14psi and your electricity utility will not let you have nearly enough power for that!

Dave.
 
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I record loud. I put my cab in another room often when I don't want it to feedback. I use a 50 ft speaker cable. The amp head stays with me in the tracking room, and the cab is way out in the hallway knocking pictures off the wall. Works great. There's no loss of tone or signal whatsoever and I'm not constantly melting my face off. From what I understand in layman's terms, a speaker cable is not shielded, but it doesn't need to be because in essence the signal going through it is hot enough to keep interference out. A guitar cable is shielded, but a long run of it would be more succeptible to interference because the signal traveling through it is very weak. Long mic cables are generally okay because they're shielded and balanced. So for me, a long speaker cable and long mic cable works just fine, and I can leave the head right next to me.
 
kip4 said:
what about if i keep the amp in the studio and a seperate cab in my room with the mic. ? will a long speaker cable degrade the signal or suck my tone?
Click to expand...

It just occured to me that you're using a combo. That changes things. You're pretty much outta luck unless you use an extension cab - which would probably sound better anyway. Or you could take the amp apart and just sit with the chassis in the room with you and put the cab portion out in another room.
 
it has a speaker out jack so i can build a 10" cab from scratch and put it in another room with some gobos and prey the neighbours dont bubble me to the feds
Thanks Greg
 
kip4 said:
it has a speaker out jack so i can build a 10" cab from scratch and put it in another room with some gobos and prey the neighbours dont bubble me to the feds
Thanks Greg
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If you are going to build another cab make it big enough to take 12incher. There is vastly more choice of good 12" guitar speakers. Good tens can be counted on little more than two hands.

VERY ball park scenario but "smooth jazz/blues" Celestion Greenback (the 55Hz one). Searing mid range rock. Celestion Vintage 30.

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
If you are going to build another cab make it big enough to take 12incher. There is vastly more choice of good 12" guitar speakers. Good tens can be counted on little more than two hands.

VERY ball park scenario but "smooth jazz/blues" Celestion Greenback (the 55Hz one). Searing mid range rock. Celestion Vintage 30.

Dave.
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Yes. Go with a 12" speaker. Lots of good choices, and I'm pretty convinced that Greenbacks rule for everything.
 
Greg_L said:
Yes. Go with a 12" speaker. Lots of good choices, and I'm pretty convinced that Greenbacks rule for everything.
Click to expand...

Greenbacks are luverly yes but not the beallandendall. They have a low power rating 25/30W and lower sensitivity than most 12 gitspeakers (95/97dBW/Mtr IIRC?) and they are not a good choice if you want a really ballsy tone that cuts through.

If there was one "perfect" guitar speaker it might be the Celestion Gold? Much of the old style Cobalt tone but with a high power rating and just about THE loudest loudspeaker I have ever tried, belies even its 100dB rating...Lotta wonga tho'but.

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
Greenbacks are luverly yes but not the beallandendall. They have a low power rating 25/30W and lower sensitivity than most 12 gitspeakers (95/97dBW/Mtr IIRC?) and they are not a good choice if you want a really ballsy tone that cuts through.
Click to expand...
I'm gonna have to call bull on that. You and I have vastly different experiences with Greenbacks. GB's have been used very successfully in every genre, in every decade, clean tone and overdriven. There's nothing they won't do - provided you use them properly.

If there was one "perfect" guitar speaker it might be the Celestion Gold? Much of the old style Cobalt tone but with a high power rating and just about THE loudest loudspeaker I have ever tried, belies even its 100dB rating...Lotta wonga tho'but.

Dave.
Click to expand...

Yes, great speaker.....for the price of 2 Greenbacks or Vintage 30's.
 
Ya know, if we're gonna get into speakers.....another kick ass speaker that I got to try out recently and was really impressed with is the WGS ET-65. Man, really tight and chunky without any harshness anywhere. It was kind of like a "soft" Vintage 30. Less spiky than a Vintage 30, more low end than a Vintage 30, but generally smooth overall like a Greenback and more aggressive sounding than a Greenback.

69 bucks!
 
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