Stomp Pedals or Plug-in?

[Seafroggys]

I know the answer to this is "use your ears." But thought I'd get a discussion going just to see people's personal preferences.

I'm in the middle of recording an album. I like recording minimalistic guitars.....guitar and amp. About the only pedals I like are things like wah or a boost pedal for solos. I'm old school like that.

There's a part in one of the songs that I'm thinking of kinda an 80's chorusy effect for the rhythm guitar. Now, I know guitarists have their 'sound' and they have their 'live rig' that they use, and that's totally cool. But this is just recording in a vacuum, no established 'sound' or anything like that. So with that being said, my question to you guys, do you get better results with using a chorus pedal right at the source, or with a plug-in?

Now I know the obvious advantages and disadvantages. Pedal is permanent, but could potentially sound better than the plug-in. Yadada. What would you guys prefer in this scenario? Also, and this might be a stupid question, do chorus pedals behave any differently than a typical chorus plug-in? In that, is a pedal chorus specifically designed for guitar, where a plug-in is designed to be universal? Or could a pedal chorus theoretically work with anything passing through it and sound theoretically the same to a regular chorus plug-in?

 

[Bristol Posse]

I'll *usually* go with pedals and record the speaker in the room for a few reasons

1) I like the sound of a mic'd guitar amp without any VST nonsense involved
2) I play differently when I have the FX going, it sounds different playing clean and then effecting rather than playing through FX
3) I like to get the sound I want/need and record it in a room rather than record dry and then try to find the sound I want/need in a computer
4) I trust myself to be able to record what I want to hear. I used to take a "Safety" DI to effect later if needed, but never ended up using it. Now I just play and record. It's more fun and feels like a performance.

One place I might try a VST would be a delay that is critical to time perfectly to the song, although I'd still try and get it off the mic'd amp first. If the feel still works with delay timing imperfections I'd take it.

For chorus I tend to go with mono unless it's a really sparse mix and just prefer the sound of it coming out of a guitar speaker into a mic a couple of feet off the cab. trying to get that with a vst is tough. You're adding effecting the recorded sound, reflections and all, rather than recording the sound of the effect in the room. It seems like it's not a big deal but it sounds different and I prefer the recorded sound of the effect over the effected sound of the recording.

YMMV

 

[ashcat_lt]

There's nothing a pedal chorus can't do that a decent VST can't do, and probably better, except come through the amp and speaker. This will make a huge difference because of the low pass filter action of the speaker. It just plain won't pass anything above maybe 4-5K no matter what the chorus does. And, of course, if you've got any kind of compression or overdrive from the amp it will be a noticeably different thing depending on whether the chorus is before or after that.

I personally tend to prefer pre-amp effects for guitar in most situations, but the chorus that I think of when I think of the 80s was almost certainly added via some rack module in the mix, and would probably be easier achieved with a VST.

 

[mjbphotos]

You answered the question in your first sentence: "use your ears". Get the sound you want, don't worry about how you got it.

 

[MetroCenter]

Adding to what you said, chorus/flanger/phaser effects all benefit from lots of harmonics and frequencies. So where in the chain you put the effect is going to have a big impact.

Now there are three places you can put the effect: (1) before the amp, (2) in the effects loop (between the preamp and the power amp), and (3) after the amp (in post-processing).

The reason I would avoid (3) is due to the "low-pass action of the speaker". Micing the amplified speaker is likely to cut out a lot of the high-frequencies, and thus limit the sonic sweep of the chorus effect.

Personally, I'd say if you have an effects loop, put a chorus pedal there. By then, the sound will have developed most of its "grit", which will make that chorus really sound sweeping.

Of course, there are no hard/fast rules, and you should do what your ears tell you to do. But there are reasons that some things sound better than others.