Scott Baxendale
Well-known member
I like ribbon mics on guitar amps. I generally use a Royer r122. The SM7 is also great. I also have an old EV dynamic mic that is great on guitar cabs. I’ll use a 57 in a heartbeat though..
DrewPeterson7
Sage of the Order
I've experimented a bit using a ribbon to supplement a SM57 - seems to work better with humbuckers than singlecoils, somehow, and while the jury isn't fully out, mostly I think a SM57/MD421 works better across the board for me. Then again, while I'm not exactly the highest gain player in the world, I do think we probably work with slightly different gain structures for the most part. :lol:
Scott Baxendale
Well-known member
The MD421 is one mic I don’t have but should. Thats an excellent combo for guitar amps.
Lately I’ve just been using my UAOXBOX and have been recording direct. This method has pretty much transformed how I record electric guitars. When I first got it I didn’t read any manual but just started going through all the settings and when I got my sound the settings were the exact same setup I used live which was a 12” open back cab with a dynamic paired with a ribbon.
TAE
All you have is now
garbage in garbage out, mediocrity in mediocrity out, It's all right in, it's alright out, solid gold in, solid gold out. You can not polish a turd, a bar of gold with poop all over it is still a bar of gold...just stinky.
I 100% agree with TalismanRich's observation. GAS is the animal that all music and recording gear manufacturers target and dangle shiny objects in front of. All in an effort to keep the lights on and make Mo money via extraction of said GAS animals hard earned cash.
We can can get stellar recording for almost nothing these days. To keep throwing cash at "new and improved", "but wait there's more!" instead of just woodshedding and making due with what you have until you have found a way to make a really decent recording is just sillyness..yet we can't help ourselves. I have gotten a lot better at not jumping in on this stuff but I still give in now and then. I'm a lot better though.
Most of us here are musicians trying to get our songs down / recorded....the recording engineer process is an art in of itself...some of us have the time and persistence to overcome the minutia of the recording process and master it.....some of us don't....I'm still in the don't group but I've gotten better. Shiny objects and new and improved "things" distract us , give us a break and hope that this next magical piece of gear will allow us to break through the glass ceiling and make solid gold recordings. Not the way it works.
As a business owner and a marketing guy who has been in the game for the last 25 years it is an insidious game being played on us ever day and in every way "they" can playit on us. Everyone from the lady pawning handmade trinkets out in front of the grocery store to the top of the tippy top of Madison ave king pins.
You know what you want, but do you know why you want it?
Great article on the game of marketing
I 100% agree with TalismanRich's observation. GAS is the animal that all music and recording gear manufacturers target and dangle shiny objects in front of. All in an effort to keep the lights on and make Mo money via extraction of said GAS animals hard earned cash.
We can can get stellar recording for almost nothing these days. To keep throwing cash at "new and improved", "but wait there's more!" instead of just woodshedding and making due with what you have until you have found a way to make a really decent recording is just sillyness..yet we can't help ourselves. I have gotten a lot better at not jumping in on this stuff but I still give in now and then. I'm a lot better though.
Most of us here are musicians trying to get our songs down / recorded....the recording engineer process is an art in of itself...some of us have the time and persistence to overcome the minutia of the recording process and master it.....some of us don't....I'm still in the don't group but I've gotten better. Shiny objects and new and improved "things" distract us , give us a break and hope that this next magical piece of gear will allow us to break through the glass ceiling and make solid gold recordings. Not the way it works.
As a business owner and a marketing guy who has been in the game for the last 25 years it is an insidious game being played on us ever day and in every way "they" can playit on us. Everyone from the lady pawning handmade trinkets out in front of the grocery store to the top of the tippy top of Madison ave king pins.
You know what you want, but do you know why you want it?
Great article on the game of marketing
Scott Baxendale
Well-known member
If this were true then everyone would be releasing their albums made on their iPhones with garage band.
Once I built my rig I don’t have the GAS nearly as much anymore because I’ve achieved the sound that makes me happy. I haven’t bought a new piece of recording gear in the last 7 years.
The guys I know who own working professional studios have built their rigs to a point but then just work that gear. I don’t see them clamoring for the next latest whiz bang rack unit. If you walk into Sun Studios in Memphis, which you can still rent out to record has essentially the same studio they had 50 years ago. Some of the gear is newer but is the same type.
I’m still waiting for the next big band to use nothing but squire guitars into their iPhones to make their Grammy winning record.
No matter how much this topic gets debated the bottom line it is still the song meets a performance that makes a record.
Often the GAS syndrome is just a deflection from a basic lack of talent. It’s the Blues Lawyer effect.
Papanate
Well-known member
Performances can be crafted now more than ever - and I feel that is the core problem with music these days
- people hear the ‘performance’ but don’t feel it is right - which BTW The Beatles, George Martin, Norman Smith
and Geoff Emerick were masters of creating performances - but they started from a performance and went from
there - and the GAS syndrome is why people buy high end microphones and preamps but can’t get a useable sound.
DrewPeterson7
Sage of the Order
Yeah they compliment each other really well.
I've been tracking through a Radial Reamp Station and using Amplitube 5 for "placeholder" tones. It's very good - does very credible versions of the two actual amps I plan on reamping through when everything's said and done, and I'm able to replicate the cabs and mics and positions I use fairly closely. I could release this with the VST tones and all twelve people who will probably hear this wouldn't miss a thing. But, they're a little too "polite," for lack of a better word - the high end in particular is just a little unnaturally smooth. For some people that's probably a selling point, for me I still think the real thing sounds a little nicer.
DrewPeterson7
Sage of the Order
For what it's worth, I'm in the camp that, while I got into home recording as a way to write and record music, I also really enjoy the process of making a good sounding recording.
I'm also in the camp where over the... damn, more than two decades I've been doing this, I've really paid my dues learning how to make acceptable sounding recordings using really shitty gear. I remember my first recordings were done in my college dorm using my laptop's built in speaker by placing the laptop in front of my amp, before "graduating" to one of those old whammy-bar-looking computer mics plugged into the sound card mic input, before eventually getting a knockoff SM57 and an XLR-to-1/4" cable and 1/4-to-1/8" and balancing that on a couple books or hanging it over the front of the cab. When I first got even a cheap USB interface, back in maybe 2004, it was absolutely mind-blowing to me how suddenly the low end of my recordings wasn't being eaten alive. Since then I've gradually got better and better gear, not just in terms of a better interface or whatnot but things like mic stands so I could actually carefully control where the mic was going, etc. Hated SM57s for years until I got the hang of positioning and realized everything I didn't like about it just worked in a mix.
I think if you take a beginner and give them a $10,000 home studio, they'll hang themselves and sound like shit doing so. But, give someone absolute shit gear, and give them five or ten years to try to make something decent sounding with it, and then give them better gear... you'll get very different results.
The nice thing is if you don't care about the recording process, thanks to things like EzMix and modeling amps and the like, it's never been easier to take a song and, if your performances are any good, produce a recording of it that you can be proud to share, without really knowing much of anything about how to track or mix. But if you're invested in the process, it's also never been easier to make really good sounding recordings outside of a studio the old fashioned way, either.
TalismanRich
Well-known member
RE: the original object of the thread, the Behringer preamp, I ran across this article by someone who has 8 1073s and a WA73 and Behringer 1373.
www.highontechnology.tech
The interesting conclusion is that it is a very good sounding preamp giving the essential qualities of a 1073 at 18% of the cost of a comparable AMS Neve 1073DPX. You could buy 2 1273s and have 4 channels and still have enough to buy an SM7B, or you could buy one single channel 1073SPX.
If you're running a commercial studio charging $$$ by the hour, he admits that "A rack full of 1273 is not going to impress bands looking for a place to record but for a musician/songwriter on a tight budget the 1273 offers a lot of sound, capability and solid performance for a bargain price. "
REVIEW: BEHRINGER 1273 COMPARED TO NEVE 1073SPX AND WARM AUDIO WA-73
HighOnTechnology is a blog that covers the latest developments in Sound, Recording and Music Production, Audio Technology and Gear. Best Reviews Here.
The interesting conclusion is that it is a very good sounding preamp giving the essential qualities of a 1073 at 18% of the cost of a comparable AMS Neve 1073DPX. You could buy 2 1273s and have 4 channels and still have enough to buy an SM7B, or you could buy one single channel 1073SPX.
If you're running a commercial studio charging $$$ by the hour, he admits that "A rack full of 1273 is not going to impress bands looking for a place to record but for a musician/songwriter on a tight budget the 1273 offers a lot of sound, capability and solid performance for a bargain price. "
Scott Baxendale
Well-known member
I always get usable sound from my high end mics and preamps. That is my point. The premise is largely false and is generally promoted by folks who don’t get the concept of: You get what you pay for.
The very day I switched from the Tascam pro-Sumer -10 world into the API +4 world I could instantly make pro sounding records with no other differences in my process. The difference in headroom alone is astronomical.
I have never experienced this concept of high end mics and preamps giving me an unusable sound. Thats a wives tale IMO.
Now, this current argument regarding folks like Behringer making their cheap versions iconic preamps, compressors, etc is sort of like the argument in the difference between say a hardware UA1176 vs a plugin. I use plugins a lot but they are considerably different than the hardware version.
Scott Baxendale
Well-known member
I have a radial reamp box, but I have not used it since I got the UAOXBOX. One of the cool things about it is that there is a built in 1176, delay, EQ, and plate reverb and the way it works it gives you mix ready tracks at the recording stage saving a lot of time manipulating the tracks after recording.
TAE
All you have is now
I could be wrong, I'd like to be wrong but with AI and the changing tide of how music is created and produced brick and mortar recording studios are going the way of the dinosaur. I suppose some of the super big studios will still be able to carve out a living. As I said in my earlier post. It is just too easy to get an excellent multitrack recording on a very low budget. The Billie Eilish thing was eye opening for me
In 2020, Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas made history by winning five Grammy Awards for music recorded and produced in their childhood bedroom.
The 2020 Grammy Sweep
During the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, the duo swept the "Big Four" categories—a feat that hadn't been accomplished by a single artist in 39 years:
- Album of the Year: When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
- Record of the Year: "Bad Guy"
- Song of the Year: "Bad Guy"
- Best New Artist: Billie Eilish
- Best Pop Vocal Album: When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
Special preamps pffffft!
TalismanRich
Well-known member
I don't think it's a case of high end everything give unusable results (unless what you are recording is garbage).
Rather it's that the concept that you MUST HAVE high dollar expensive gear to make useable, or even excellent recordings is patently false. Today's equipment is not your 1970s Tascam mixer. A U47 into a Neve console with a rack of vintage effects is not going to turn me into a Grammy winner.
Years ago, I could absolutely tell the difference between the direct feed from microphones and a playback from a DBX 1/2" 8 track. The direct feed was the truth... it was the original source. The tape was not equal. It doesn't matter if you could massage into something you liked or thought was usable or even if you THOUGHT it was better. It was WRONG.
Even with today's consumer recording interfaces, I don't hear that difference between the direct feed and the looped feed. My interface and computer together cost me about $200 more than my first 4 track tape deck in '76. That doesn't include the 400% inflation that has happened. I have 16 input channels and 8 preamps which I didn't get with the tape deck. It gives me back what I put into it. That's all I ask of it. If I felt that a 73 style preamp would sound nicer, fine. I might try one. But I would NOT get an AMS/Neve. It's not worth the investment to me.
This is still Home Recording... it's a lot more likely that a hobbiest home recorder will spend $700 for a Berry 1273 than $4500 on an AMS 1073DPX unless money isn't an issue. I suspect that very few would even be able to tell the difference in the sound coming out of the speakers.
Scott Baxendale
Well-known member
She ain’t using that mic now, though. I just read where she is using a $10k Soundeluxe mic these days.
Billie and Phineas are genius artists which goes to my earlier point that it’s the song first, then the vocal that makes it great. Also, to my earlier point that recording with a $100 mic through a small interface into a laptop is the way most artists are trying to record these days . These wav files require a lot of manipulation after tracking before they can be considered ‘a record’. My point is I’ve been there making recordings for years that way, with crappy mics through $5 preamps. These recordings sound ok, but once I entered the pro level, gear wise, it sounds like a record from the beginning.
Scott Baxendale
Well-known member
This goes back to Billie Eilish and her first album. However, had Phineas been using a Neve and a U47 for that record I bet it would have sounded noticeably different and better.
I bet money those tracks were re-amped through ‘special preamps’ in the mixing process. These two are artistic geniuses. Today they are using super high end gear.
Bruce recorded Nebraska on a 4trk cassette tape. This again proves that it’s the song first and vocal second that makes a record. It’s art and any gear on the planet can be used for making it.
I’ve been making home recordings since 1975 mostly on Tascam 1/2” 8 track gear until about 20 years ago when I got a 414, SM7, and a API 3124. There was a huge improvement in my recordings after that upgrade and since then I’ve continued to upgrade until I had 16 I/O of all API. At that point I stopped upgrading. I need to be able to track a rhythm section live. My workflow is best when I can track the drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and a scratch vocal all live. Then go back and add the other stuff. Building up one track at a time is a much less preferable method for me.
Normally when I work we get together and spend about 2-3 hours working on one song until we get a solid tight rhythm track that we like. Having 16 preamps is essential to make this happen.
I’m resistant to a lot of modern techniques because I get bored working with computer screens and constantly dealing with login, software uploads, downloads, plugins. I do use plugins when mixing but usually try to go with a less is more approach.
I also get that you can get a focusrite interface with a laptop, a couple of mics, and a pair of headphones and make a record. I get bored too fast recording like that.
Lately, for quick mixes I use logic on my iPad with a MOTU microbookC and come straight out of my console into it.
I just think it’s well worth the money to use a decent discreet preamp no matter how you are recording if you want to make good recordings.
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