The New Tone Thread

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Ray, I think it's your amp or mic positioning. Those "acoustic" clips don't sound dark. You're not gonna get a whole lot of audio information at 10k from a guitar speaker. There's some stuff up there, but it's not gonna be peaking a spectrum analyzer. It's mostly "air" and presence, and hiss, etc. It adds some shine to a guitar track, but there's no tone up there. I doubt your interface preamps are giving you any trouble. I think it's your source sound and/or mic positioning.


In other news, I played an original 1964/65 Vox Berkeley Reverb Twin today. One of these Beatles looking things...
vox-berkeley-super-reverb-twin.jpg


It was so cool. Cranked it had a decent break up, but it was mostly pretty clean. 18 watts. Not loud enough for me, but it sounded pretty cool and jangly. Good tremolo on it. Decent reverb. Lots of cool vibe to it though.
 
Greg_L said:
Ray, I think it's your amp or mic positioning. Those "acoustic" clips don't sound dark. You're not gonna get a whole lot of audio information at 10k from a guitar speaker. There's some stuff up there, but it's not gonna be peaking a spectrum analyzer. It's mostly "air" and presence, and hiss, etc. It adds some shine to a guitar track, but there's no tone up there. I doubt your interface preamps are giving you any trouble. I think it's your source sound and/or mic positioning.


In other news, I played an original 1964/65 Vox Berkeley Reverb Twin today. One of these Beatles looking things...

It was so cool. Cranked it had a decent break up, but it was mostly pretty clean. 18 watts. Not loud enough for me, but it sounded pretty cool and jangly. Good tremolo on it. Decent reverb. Lots of cool vibe to it though.
Click to expand...

Dang, that amp is so old, it has a walker built into it!

That's pretty sweet though, I've always been a fan of VOX amps when they get nasty.
 
Tadpui said:
Dang, that amp is so old, it has a walker built into it!
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Lol. Yup. The one I played was ooooold and crusty, but it worked. I think it may have had some kind of problem though.It sounded good, but it was definitely not 18 watts loud. An AC15 would stomp a mudhole into this Berkeley thing. I had that amp literally cranked and it wasn't loud enough to disturb the goings-on in the music store. If I had done that with a Fender or a Marshall I'd be in jail right now for noise terrorism.

That's pretty sweet though, I've always been a fan of VOX amps when they get nasty.
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Me too, but the "AC" amps do it better than this one.
 
Greg_L said:
I had that amp literally cranked and it wasn't loud enough to disturb the goings-on in the music store. If I had done that with a Fender or a Marshall I'd be in jail right now for noise terrorism.
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I love how you describe things & put the "Gerg" twist on everything dude...:). You're my fuckin' hero!!!:D


Just curious, how much did they want for that dinosaur of an amp???
 
Armistice said:
https://homerecording.com/bbs/gener...clinic/choose-your-weapons-been-while-388471/

You guys should stop hanging around here in the dark corners of HR and step into the goodness and light of the MP3 Clinic where you can appreciate the toans in my new tune. I don't do them that often. :D

But seriously, I could use the ears - and I don't get all defensive and whiny about mix criticism. Been here too long for that. :thumbs up:

(Track contains no acoustic guitars - just electric. :) )
Click to expand...

Hey dude, gimme a few minutes & I'll let you know what I think about it...
 
Fender Hotrod Deluxe

It's the ugly stepchild of the bigger Fender tube amps. Ubiquitous but they don't get the love of the reissues. Cheap used. This is one of the early ones, I bought it new around 2000, my first Fender amp. It is running 6V6 tubes instead of the standard 6L6. It knocks the wattage down to about 30. Still a loud amp.

I'm working on a new song and decided to drag it out of the closet. It recorded pretty well, I thought. It's a clean rhythm part followed by a solo. The clip plays through each part with the guitar soloed, then repeats with the accompaniment for context (little volume jump). The guitar is straight in with no effects except a delay. Sorry, I always track the delay.

Guitar: Fender Telecaster, bridge pickup.
Channel: Clean
Volume: 6
Treble: 6
Mid: 5
Bass: 5
Presence: 5
Mic: SM57 angled directly, 1 inch from the grill, halfway out from the cap.

 
minerman said:
I love how you describe things & put the "Gerg" twist on everything dude...:). You're my fuckin' hero!!!:D


Just curious, how much did they want for that dinosaur of an amp???
Click to expand...

$1200. The amp was cool as shit. It really was. I'd seen pics of these famous "Beatles-style" TV stand looking Vox head and cab combos before, but I'd never seen one in person. Definitely never got to play through one. It was cool to fiddle with some history. 60s Fenders are still a dime a dozen. These fucking oddballs are really rare. I'm glad I got to play with it. And I'm more glad I got to play with it and totally don't want it. :D

I noticed a few other things....seems like Guitar Center has given up on Mesas? I went to two big GCs yesterday and there was not one Mesa in sight. I wonder if this is a sign of their financial woes. Or maybe it's Mesas problem? I don't know. They still had tons of guitars and other amps, but no Mesas.

The only hint of GAS I got yesterday was over a Gibson Explorer. There was a black one I saw with a bound neck and 57 Classic pickups, which is all a plus over the naked neck and those hideous 500Ts that usually come in Explorers. Those big ugly semi-pointy things are staring to call to me a little bit. But I think I can keep it at bay. I'm not that interested. I'd still rather find the right deal on a 70s or early 80s LP Custom.
 
Oh, I forgot, some Gibson bashing....

I handled quite a few really high end super-expensive 1959 LP reissues yesterday. Some of them were theme guitars, like Rick Nielsen's 1959, and this one weird-burst called "southern rock" or something like that. And a Billy Gibbons. A bunch of these relic'd Gibson Custom Shop things. Hanging on the wall they looked gorgeous. In my hands they felt and played really nice. But these finishes up close are garbage. On most of them, the neck stain had faded into the binding all the way up to the fret marker dots. The binding looked pink almost. The dots were murky. Same at the neck joint. There is this thick area at the neck joint where the body binding and neck binding kind of overlap on Les Pauls. On these guitars it was a mess of stain bleeding out from under and through the binding. It just looked like ass. I have to assume maybe it's an intentional part of the "aging" they do because it was on so many of those type of guitars. I hope that's the case because these guitars looked like shit up close and they all cost north of $5000. Regular production Customs, Standards, and Traditionals were tight and tidy and clean. These Custom Shop things were a mess.
 
Well, that dinosaur amp wasn't as expensive as I thought it'd be, almost but not quite...

Just guessing, I'd say GC's financial woes are part of the Mesa's not being there, I've read/heard they're having a really hard time (GC), but not sure myself, & it really wouldn't affect me personally, as the closest GC is about 3-4 hours drive, one way, & I really have no desire to own a Mesa myself...

On the old/relic'd Gibson thing dude, I figured the binding would be more yellow than pink myself, & would probably get upset if I bought a $5k+ guitar & it looked like shit the way you described 'em, but, I don't think I'll ever have to worry myself about that at all, probably never gonna happen. The SG is the most expensive piece of gear I have, but I didn't take the hit all at once...

If I ever got an Explorer, it'd have to have a locking trem on it, preferably a FR. I've never really messed with a Kahler trem system, I'm sure they're probably about the same though. I did see an early 80's Explorer with a Kahler trem somewhere online during my SG search for about $5-600, and IIRC, it still looked decent for a 30 year old guitar, but it didn't spark my interest any at all...My preacher nephew had an Epiphone a few years ago, but I never played it, this was during the 6-7 years I never even picked a guitar up...He ended up trading it off, so I don't know if he just didn't like it or what...
 
Robus said:
It's the ugly stepchild of the bigger Fender tube amps. Ubiquitous but they don't get the love of the reissues. Cheap used. This is one of the early ones, I bought it new around 2000, my first Fender amp. It is running 6V6 tubes instead of the standard 6L6. It knocks the wattage down to about 30. Still a loud amp.

I'm working on a new song and decided to drag it out of the closet. It recorded pretty well, I thought. It's a clean rhythm part followed by a solo. The clip plays through each part with the guitar soloed, then repeats with the accompaniment for context (little volume jump). The guitar is straight in with no effects except a delay. Sorry, I always track the delay.

Guitar: Fender Telecaster, bridge pickup.
Channel: Clean
Volume: 6
Treble: 6
Mid: 5
Bass: 5
Presence: 5
Mic: SM57 angled directly, 1 inch from the grill, halfway out from the cap.

Click to expand...

As soon as the track started, I thought "that's a Telecaster". Great classic Tele tone there. Honestly, I love everything about that tone for cleans. I'm not sure that there's anything that I'd change other than the delay, which seems to fight against the rhythm a bit. And that's a Hot Rod Deluxe? Man, I've never heard their cleans before...those are actually pretty damn impressive. I'd be curious to hear it up against your Deluxe Reverb.
 
Hey, wanna waste 10 minutes of your day?

I've been totally geeking out about video lately, and I spent all weekend trying to figure out how to record my screen and still have a voiceover going at the same time. I finally figured it out! Jeez, it's only buried in the Cockos forum and involves an undocumented feature of Reaper that Justin himself divulged 20 posts deep in a thread...

Anyways, as an exercise in both figuring out some video stuff and an excuse to play some guitar tones...Rayc's issue with his Focusrite got me curious about the frequency response in my own guitar tones, so I picked an assortment of them and ran them through Waves PAZ just to see what they looked like. It's probably no help at all, but here it is...humor my newfound geekery about shooting video :D

 
Thanks Tadpui. I think the Deluxe would sound a little sweeter in a side-by-side, but no doubt the HRD is capable of a respectable Fender clean tone. Did you hear that little rumble underneath the end of the rhythm part? I never noticed it before, but I haven't tracked with this amp in a long time. I don't know if it's in the amp, the speaker, the microphone preamp, or maybe something that the digital delay in the FX loop added. I'll have to troubleshoot it. That's the only thing that annoyed me about the tone in this clip.

A shootout between the HRD and the Deluxe would be fun.
 
Robus said:
Thanks Tadpui. I think the Deluxe would sound a little sweeter in a side-by-side, but no doubt the HRD is capable of a respectable Fender clean tone. Did you hear that little rumble underneath the end of the rhythm part? I never noticed it before, but I haven't tracked with this amp in a long time. I don't know if it's in the amp, the speaker, the microphone preamp, or maybe something that the digital delay in the FX loop added. I'll have to troubleshoot it. That's the only thing that annoyed me about the tone in this clip.

A shootout between the HRD and the Deluxe would be fun.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I head that little crackly rumble upon a 2nd listen. If I were to guess, I'd say that it's either the speaker or the chassis itself. Personally, I'm so ready to ditch my combo amps and go all-in for heads on cabinets because every combo I've ever had rattles or crackles or has some sort of vibration that comes through the preamp tubes. Drives me nuts. It could be something like that, where the preamp just reflects the severe abuse that it's going through due to sharing a little box with a speaker vibrating like crazy.
 
Tadpui said:
Hey, wanna waste 10 minutes of your day?

I've been totally geeking out about video lately, and I spent all weekend trying to figure out how to record my screen and still have a voiceover going at the same time. I finally figured it out! Jeez, it's only buried in the Cockos forum and involves an undocumented feature of Reaper that Justin himself divulged 20 posts deep in a thread...

Anyways, as an exercise in both figuring out some video stuff and an excuse to play some guitar tones...Rayc's issue with his Focusrite got me curious about the frequency response in my own guitar tones, so I picked an assortment of them and ran them through Waves PAZ just to see what they looked like. It's probably no help at all, but here it is...humor my newfound geekery about shooting video :D

Click to expand...


Cool vid Tad, I'm still getting my courage up to make a video & post it up here....I know you guys would like it if you watch "The Walking Dead", 'cause I resemble one of the zombies now....:laughings:.

But seriously, I've tried using spectrum analyzers+eq to ape guitar tones (using ampsims), & could never really get where I wanted with 'em. I could see where the frequencies would be different, & could get kinda ballpark, but could never "nail" a certain tone this way. I finally gave up & just started using tones I thought sounded good enough for certain things...This was before my real amp days though, while I have tried to ape different tones with my real amps, I've never tried the analyzer+eq route, I always tried to get my guitar/amp/cab/mic there without post-processing, which IMO is how one should go about it, try to get it right at the source...
 
Tadpui said:
Yeah, I head that little crackly rumble upon a 2nd listen. If I were to guess, I'd say that it's either the speaker or the chassis itself. Personally, I'm so ready to ditch my combo amps and go all-in for heads on cabinets because every combo I've ever had rattles or crackles or has some sort of vibration that comes through the preamp tubes. Drives me nuts. It could be something like that, where the preamp just reflects the severe abuse that it's going through due to sharing a little box with a speaker vibrating like crazy.
Click to expand...

It doesn't sound like chassis rattle to me. I'll see if I can isolate it tomorrow. I'm so with you on the hassles of combo amps. I'd have ditched them long ago, but some of the classic tones I crave come in a combo.
 
Tadpui,
That was cool. It does point out that visuals often aren't the answer.
The feq charts you compared at the end really confuse the assumptions about things being black & white.
I really enjoyed the vid.
I'll have to post some charts of my tone AFTER I try a diff mic placement.
THANKS!
Now, link to THE secret of vid & voice over in Reaper please?
 
rayc said:
Tadpui,
That was cool. It does point out that visuals often aren't the answer.
The feq charts you compared at the end really confuse the assumptions about things being black & white.
I really enjoyed the vid.
I'll have to post some charts of my tone AFTER I try a diff mic placement.
Click to expand...

Yeah I agree Ray, that video does show that the frequency analyzers don't always show what we expect. This actually surprised me, especially the muddy-sounding Fender clip, I just assumed it wouldn't have any highs at all in the analyzer, but I was way off...for me that's nothing unusual though...:D


Be sure you post your clips & findings when you get around to it, I'd like to know if there's anything up with your interface, or something else, as it may help us all here...


rayc said:
Now, link to THE secret of vid & voice over in Reaper please?
Click to expand...

Yes please...:)
 
minerman said:
Cool vid Tad, I'm still getting my courage up to make a video & post it up here....I know you guys would like it if you watch "The Walking Dead", 'cause I resemble one of the zombies now....:laughings:.
Click to expand...
Cool - I was quite a big fan of The Walking Dead for a few years.

I'll hopefully pop a video together (of slightly better quality than my coffee song that I posted a couple of years ago) at the end of the week when I finally have some time off work! Although the surf's been great lately so I've not had time to record. I was just gonna video it on my phone and find a way of overlying the actual track over it.

While I'm writing, quick update: Even though I haven't had the time to sit down and concentrate on recording I have been playing a lot - the V30 sounds great. I've got a track that I'm looking forward to re-recording so hopefully I'll get that done.
 
Tadpui said:
Hey, wanna waste 10 minutes of your day?

I've been totally geeking out about video lately, and I spent all weekend trying to figure out how to record my screen and still have a voiceover going at the same time. I finally figured it out! Jeez, it's only buried in the Cockos forum and involves an undocumented feature of Reaper that Justin himself divulged 20 posts deep in a thread...

Anyways, as an exercise in both figuring out some video stuff and an excuse to play some guitar tones...Rayc's issue with his Focusrite got me curious about the frequency response in my own guitar tones, so I picked an assortment of them and ran them through Waves PAZ just to see what they looked like. It's probably no help at all, but here it is...humor my newfound geekery about shooting video :D

Click to expand...


First off, great job on that video. You're getting some great results for just getting into it. Hell, your last two vids have been good for any experience level. They're as good as I've seen without a pro production effort.

Secondly, it confirms what I always thought and said in that frequency analyzers are virtually useless for production. I think they're good for a quick peek at a full mix if you're hearing a problem that you can't quite identify, but overall, wtf. You just confirmed that they're confusing at best and liars at worst when it comes to hearing with your eyes.

Thirdly, it confirms that guitar speakers don't kick out many jams past 5k. There's air, there's presence, and it obviously doesn't take much of either to give a guitar track enough top end. Most of the magic lies in the mids and upper mids to low high end.

Fourthly, that first riff in your vid is pretty killer.
 
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