Recording with pedals?

[Greg_L]

There's a guy here that goes by "minerman". Really nice fella, and he really cares about guitar tone. He's been plugging in direct and using just the virtual stompboxes in his sim software, and then reamping that through his real-life amps. It's sounding really good.

 

[ashcat_lt]

Anyway...I kinda get a kick when people ask these types of questions...."How would it sound if I took A and then plugged into B and then added C?" ...I mean, for cryin' out loud, just try it and find out how it would sound!!!
No need to have a thread about it.....until maybe AFTER you've tried it and you want to report on your results.

That I agree with wholeheartedly. Just fucking plug it in and find out for yourself. As long you don't start trying to plug speaker outs into anything other than speakers you really can't hurt anything. Maybe you waste 15 minutes of your life.. How long did it take for you to get responses to this thread?

Electronically speaking, plugging a pedal into the 1M instrument input on your interface is exactly the same thing as plugging it into another pedal. Except that the pedal might actually have more headroom. All of the "Instrument" inputs I own apply quite a bit of gain, apparently expecting to receive some wimpy signal from passive pickups. I have a number of guitars which can clip those inputs without hardly trying. That's before any boost from pedals.

It recently occurred to me to actually wonder what the "nominal level" was on a PodFarm simulation. Like, what dbfs sort of equates to pumping how many volts into the amp that it's emulating? I haven't gotten a good answer on that, it probably doesn't exist, and probably doesn't matter. I did find that Line6 recommends keeping your input levels around -18dbfs. So there's that...

There is one thing that I can say the amp sims don't do anywhere near the same as my tube amp, and that's the way that the AC4 completely falls apart when I hit it with 7V P2P square waves. The DI inputs would clip way before that, and basically just pump slightly smaller square waves into the sim. With the line-level inputs set to +4dbu, I can get that 7V in without clipping, but the amp sim handles it way more gracefully than the real space heater ever could. It's a special kind of horrible.

 

[grimtraveller]

My main issue is with the over-complication of the whole process. Use an amp, use a sim, both work great. Splitting signals into pedals and DI boxes and re-routing.....it's all just too much. It's DAW masturbation. It's overthinking. It's trying to be too cute.

It's neither over complication nor overthinking. Some of us like a variety of sounds for different songs rather than the same sound for every song. Neither is the only way to go, just one of a number of ways.
Personally, I like the sound of a miked amp and that, 95% of the time, figures in what I do with electric guitar, but I also like the variety of sounds that I have come across via other means. Like DM60, I play guitar, but I'm not a guitar player. I'm also an experimenter and coming up with different sounds is great fun for me. I have fun doing this. Otherwise what's the point ? I'm too old to be a star !
Many of the great rock guitar sounds that we have loved over half a century came about by accident and few just stick a mic in front of an amp, record it once and stick that sound in the mix. Once you even double track that guitar, you're on the road to "overcomplication" in the eyes of many purists.

 

[JG96]

Why won't people just mic an amp anymore? What do people have against amps? When did using an amp become so taboo? Have I just gotten old and too nostalgic?

I think DI's give you a lot of options. For example if you try and make a fender sound like a mesa it will sound bad. A mesa sim should sound at least decent. Though I agree with you that amps sound better 95% of the time. A DI in addition works as a good safety net though.

 

[grimtraveller]

I kinda get a kick when people ask these types of questions...."How would it sound if I took A and then plugged into B and then added C?" ...I mean, for cryin' out loud, just try it and find out how it would sound!!!
No need to have a thread about it.....until maybe AFTER you've tried it and you want to report on your results.

I often think that ! I can never get over why someone wouldn't just try it. Why get a consensus of opinion first ? That way, if you like it and everyone else hates the sound based on their minds and ears, you can stand your ground and never be wrong..........until you change your mind !

 

[miroslav]

Though I agree with you that amps sound better 95% of the time. A DI in addition works as a good safety net though.

I'm all for CYA...and there are occasions where you don't have the time to audition and compare, like in some live or one-take situations....but those odd situations aside, I never understood why if 1.) amp sounds great 2.) still better add a DI track just to be "safe"....?
I mean....how far off would your judgment need to be about the amp track, that you would then end up needing to use the DI track....?
(I'm asking that generally….and not just of you).

And I'm also not talking about the situations where there is a "client" involved, and he/she is the type that can never make up their mind, so you have to do 10 great guitar tracks and they still can't pick the one they want to use.
I'm talking about us guys who are mostly doing our own thing, recording in out own studios....where we make all the decisions and know what we are after production wise....
....are those "safety" tracks really needed, or is it some kind of "comfort zone" thing, where people are just second guessing themselves...?

To me....tracking is probably the most fun.....it's that time of discovery. After that, it's just a process to get to the finished product. So having to re-track something is never an agonizing experience whenever I've had to do it.

 

[McShredsAlot]

Im on my phone so I didn't want to look through this thread again to find the exact post, but someone said I should just try it out myself before asking the question. Anyways like I said in my post, I don't own any effect pedals. Just a looper, and a tuner pedal.

Someone else said something about the chain, and it would actually be guitar<pedal<interface<amp sim.

I would much rather mic up my amp and record through that, but I live in an apartment so thats not even really a possibility.

One of the reasons I asked this, is because I'd like to start building up a pedal board. Right now I go to school at MI in Hollywood. I really only play through real amps during classes so I wouldn't get much use at the moment with pedals, so I was seeing if they could benefit me with my home recording if I did decide to start getting some. Thanks for all of the posts though, guys! I appreciate it!

 

[ecc83]

Be wary of that pedal engineering idiocy, the "true" bypass pedal if you are going to feed the line input of an AI.

Ok when the effect is on (well, mostly!) but when off the guitar will see the low Z, about 10k,of the line input and both level and tone will be compromised.

GOOD pedals have low noise buffers on inputs and outputs (see top right!) and deliver the correct Z to the guitar whether on or off.

Then, I agree with Greg, a pedal straight into an AI will sound fizzy and bad so again, gaze TR and find pedals that have speaker emulated outputs. These were DESIGNED at the outset to feed PAs and recording gear.

Dave.

 

[calimoose]

DAW masturbation...nice

 

[ashcat_lt]

Good call on the TB. Not such a problem if you're going to an "Instrument" input, but you will want a buffer going into a line input.

Anyway, the OP has said a couple times that he plans to use an amp sim. That was the assumption that I've been running with. I will note, though, that "fizzy" is not always What you get when listening without cabinet filtration. Distortion/overdrive/fuzz might sound fizzy. Other pedals might just be really bright, or brittle, or "piezo-like". These sounds can be appropriate in places. With distortion or fuzz you might get Revolution #9, or NiN. With chorus you might get that 80s pop sound. But yeah, most of the time you'll want to put a cab sim on there.

Yeah, I think I do remember you saying that you don't actually have the pedals to "just fucking plug in and try it". Sorry about that. If you're trying to decide whether or not to get some, the answer is easy: Yes! Unless you're going for some fancy boutique bullshit, it really isn't a huge investment to grab a couple of things, and you will find uses for them. Heck, you might even take advantage of some of the more liberal return policies from MF or the like. Buy a couple pedals and play with them for a couple weeks. If you don't like it enough to keep, just send it back.

I guess that I never actually gave my opinion on the matter. Gave some facts and discussed the practicalities, but never actually said which I think sound better, or prefer in general. TBH, all other issues set aside, I guess I would prefer to use my pedals over their ITB counterparts. I am fully aware that part of the reason is irrational fetishism , but I do think they tend to sound better in some undefinable way.

That saidhere are some other practical points that have occurred to me:

1- The pedal version of an effect will always be noisier than it's ITB counterpart. Maybe not enough noisier to ruin a track, but measurably noisier. Something to consider especially if you're heading for a high gain in the amp sim.

B- Host sync. If, for whatever reason, you want or need your delays and/or modulation effects to follow precisely on the beat throughout the entire song, you will definitely find it easier (and/or cheaper) to do it ITB. You can try to dial things in by hand and ear, but that's kind of a bitch. Tap tempo is cool, but it's only as accurate as the foot doing the tapping. Frankly, having things slightly out of sync can sound more natural and organic most of the time. I'm absolutely not saying that everything had to be locked to the grid. There are times, though, when you might want it, and trying to get it with pedals will turn you grey pretty quick.

III - Automation. Sure, you can turn pedals on and off by foot, but how many can you step on at one time? You can control the sweep of a wah pedal with your foot, but what if you want to change delay time while playing, or chorus depth, or...

Again, these points are not really trying to advocate anything. You need to consider how important these concerns are, perhaps even on a track-by-track basis. Then go buy some pedals anyway, because they're cool!