simple guitar and mixer question....

[Eddie N]

friends ,

im new to live recording...so these questions are very general...

1. what makes a guitar sound differently ? is it the guitar itself or the amp that makes the distorted sound found in heavy metal ? or is it an outboard effects processor inserted between the guitar and the amp ?

2. say you have a mixer that is 8x2x1 .. that would mean that there are 8 inputs , 2 sub mixers of 4 channels each , and 1 main output.. now...say your recording drums , bass , and guitar .. the drums are on tracks 1 , 2 , and 3... bass on 5.. and guitar on 6.. you would submix the first 4 channels of drums... and then the last 4 with the bass and guitar.. and it would all be routed out of the mixer via its main output... that makes sense to me.. but.. if thats the case , how would you utilize all 4 inputs on your soundcard ? and how would you get the drums , bass , and guitar all on seperate tracks for editing and/or effects processing ? would you need 3 seperate mixers , or one with 3 main outputs , or just record the instruments one at a time ? are there any mixers with an output for each input ? i know about insert points , where as the sound is interupted after the pre amp but before the gain and eq etc, but wouldnt inserting the soundcard there be pointless because then the mixer would only be doing half its job ? excuse my nievety , but until a few days ago i ASSumed mixers had an output for each input.

p.s. i was using very general mixer and soundcard specs for simplicity's sake..

thanks again...
- eddie -

[This message has been edited by Eddie N (edited 08-26-1999).]

 

[foo]

Hi Eddie,

I'm not an amp guru, but here's my understanding of how distortion happens.

Around 1948 to 1950 or so the development of the electric guitar really started to take off. There were electrics before then (I think Adolph Rickenbacher had the first in 1936) but the Fender Broadcaster (now called the Telecaster) was the first mass-produced solid-body electric. Made in California, it was produced for the country/swing bands of the era.

It didn't take long before Gibson came up with their own solid body electric, the goldtop Les Paul in 1952.

The amplifiers of the day were small (5 to 10 watts, 6" - 8" speakers) as their function was to make the guitar loud enough to be heard in the low volume world in which they were used.

This situation continued pretty much through the Fifties, roughly until Elvis Presley did his now-famous recordings in Memphis. Guitar players discovered that in their quest for louder and louder, the (tube) amps they were using started to emit this very hep (remember, it's the late Fifties!) sound.

What they were hearing was the sound of the tubes being overdriven. The guitar amps of the day were still, generally, pretty small, but in the spirit of guitar players everywhere, they wanted louder.

It is not recorded for history which guitarist first plugged into his bass-player's 4x10 Tweed Fender Bassman and turned the volume to 10, but I'm sure the effect on him was almost orgasmic.

The combination of the whopping 35 watts (an unheard of power rating for a guitar amp at that time) and 4 10" speakers produced a sound unlike any heard before, and Rock and Roll was truly on it's way.

The way it works is that the signal from the guitar is amplified to the point that it overdrives the tubes, which produce the extremely smooth, sweet harmonic distortion that sounds so great.

Depending on whether you overdrive the pre-amp tubes, or the power amps tubes, the sound is somewhat different.

As a general rule, the classic Marshall sound comes from the power amp tubes being overdriven, and the classic Fender sound comes from the preamp tubes being overdriven. That's kind of ironic, as Jim Marshall based his early designs for the Vox amps (where he worked before founding Marshall amps) on Fender's Bassman.

A stomp box artificially alters the sound wave to look like the sound wave coming from an overdriven tube, but to my ears they usually don't quite get it right.

Amps that use transistors instead of tubes do the same thing, i.e. artificially produce the 'overdriven' sound wave.

Some amps are a hybrid of both, using tubes for the pre-amp and transistors for the power (or vice versa).

Some stomp boxes use a 12AX7 tube as the means to distort the sound of the instrument.

Different pickups will produce different sounds, depending on their output. Generally, humbuckers (e.g. Les Pauls)sound 'meatier', have more mid range and put out a larger signal than single coils (e.g. Strats) but one James Marshall Hendrix sounded okay with a Strat.

Finally, the speakers are going to affect the sound, too. One 12" 200-watt EV speaker will make a very different sound to 4x10" 25-watt Celestions.

Hope this helps; if you have more specific questions, please post them here.

As for your second question - we need someone else to answer it, 'cos I'd like to know too.

foo