Reverb advice.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deaaaath
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Deaaaath

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Hi,
I am beginning to record vocals through a Teac 3 mixing board onto a Tascam 38. I have a simple set up and no more money to spend... so what I have is all I can use. I want to get my vocals nice and reverby, so I am trying to run the microphone through my tube amp with reverb... it sounds pretty good, but there is a weird buzzing noise that is sort of distracting... I am assuming it has something to do with impedence levels or something...
Anyways, does anyone have any advice on how I can get some nice reverb on my vocals without spending much (if any) money?
thanks!
 
Deaaaath said:
Hi,
I am beginning to record vocals through a Teac 3 mixing board onto a Tascam 38. I have a simple set up and no more money to spend... so what I have is all I can use. I want to get my vocals nice and reverby, so I am trying to run the microphone through my tube amp with reverb... it sounds pretty good, but there is a weird buzzing noise that is sort of distracting... I am assuming it has something to do with impedence levels or something...
Anyways, does anyone have any advice on how I can get some nice reverb on my vocals without spending much (if any) money?
thanks!
Click to expand...

Your amp has a line out, I hope. It's a very bad idea to feed any speaker output back to your mixer or into your 38. Boards/machines have been known to die that way.
 
Hmm, thanks for the heads up! Well, the amp has a "pre-amp out" in the back of it... is that safe?
I am hooking a microphone into the amp and then a quarter inch to female xlr into my board.
 
Deaaaath said:
Hmm, thanks for the heads up! Well, the amp has a "pre-amp out" in the back of it... is that safe?
I am hooking a microphone into the amp and then a quarter inch to female xlr into my board.
Click to expand...

A preamp out is line level and safe. The rule is never send an output rated in "watts" to an input that is rated in "volts."
 
Phew, cool, thanks.
Just out of curiousity- is sending a speaker output into a board an Automatic fry or does it happen slowly?
 
Deaaaath said:
Phew, cool, thanks.
Just out of curiousity- is sending a speaker output into a board an Automatic fry or does it happen slowly?
Click to expand...

Assume/usually instant death to at least the input section being used. damage can go much further depending on circuit and signal being sent. Never do it.
 
You can take the output RCA cable directly out of the reverb tank & use a 1/4" adaptor to return a signal to your mixer on your FX / Aux returns.

However to send the signal to the tube amp you will need to watch your levels & impedances, if you don't have anything to do this with try a low level mixer output to a bypassed guitar pedal at about the same level as a guitar input signal into your tube amp.

Any signal received on the amp channel inputs should not be sending more level than a Guitar or Keyboard would without distortion from hotter signals
 
Deaaaath said:
Phew, cool, thanks.
Just out of curiousity- is sending a speaker output into a board an Automatic fry or does it happen slowly?
Click to expand...

Don't do this with a tube / valve amp, you will blow the output transformer & maybe other parts of the amp, although a solid state / transistor amp should be OK unless it has electronic problems.
 
So basically hooking up a speaker output on the tube amp to the input of the mixing board is very dangerous for both the amp and the board?
 
Deaaaath said:
So basically hooking up a speaker output on the tube amp to the input of the mixing board is very dangerous for both the amp and the board?
Click to expand...

The output of any amp. Never send the output of any device producing watts to any input expecting to see volts. What will be left of the input device might not be worth fixing after such an event.
 
Or what we used to do was take a speaker (monitor) or what ever and put it in a bathroom and mic it from a distance somewhere in the bathroom. Take the towels and stuff like that out to make it echoey and play with mic placement. Any kind of empty room. You can get some delay going that way also. it may be better than using a cheap spring reverb from a amp.
If you want to thicken up a vocal or what ever you can also transfere the vocal track to one of the other tracks and mix them down to another track.

When I was younger we didnt have much cash so we read what we could and had to make do but you would be suprised at what can be done for little.
And we only had 4 tracks to play with.

Its not the easy way but it can work well
 
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