Weakest link

[fiveyearslater]

Hey.. I was wondering what my weakest link is, when recording guitar. I use the following gear:

Epiphone Les Paul
Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier
Marshall 1936 2x12" cabinet
Shure SM58
Behringer UB1204 mixer
M-Audio Delta 44 soundcard

What should be my next purchase to improve my guitarsound? I was thinking about upgrading my cables first, and then going for a nice pre-amp, cause I heard that the Behringer built-in pre-amps are crap. An other thing could be upgrading my guitar pick-ups.. So many choices! What would you recommend? Thanx!

 

[ibanezrocks]

Tip of the day: before you buy new gear try to decide what you want to accomplish with it.

it would help if you said what part of your recording that you wanted to improve, whether you need better sound quality, more effects, etc. are you having any major problems now or are you just going for something new to try?

 

[foo]

How long have you been playing, and how good a player are you?

It may be that your next upgrade is yourself.



After the Behringer, that is.

 

[tdukex]

The Behringer Must Go.

 

[Buck62]

The Behringer Must Go.

I'll second that.

 

[-=¤willhaven¤=-]

depends what kind of music you are playing.

but i found that a decent condenser mic combined with a standard mic sounds LOADS better than one mic alone. i ended up double tracking with two mics each track. then i would pan one take more left and one more right. then pan the condensers slightly toward the middle more.

i also had two marshall 4x12 cabs for years. in an effort to push my tone to a tighter punchier area, i got rid of the marshall cabs and got one mesa 4x12 recto cab. it sounds MUCH more like what i wanted.

the marshall cabs seem to resonate with the notes more and sound a little more buzzy and sloppy. for some things (retro sounds for instance) that sounds great... but for what i wanted, the mesa cab was much more efficient.

take a look at your les paul as well. does it have those nickel pickup covers? those can make tone sound over-brittle as well.

of course i dont know what sound you want, i can just throw in my two cents.

 

[vestast]

Trade the sm58 for an sm57..

 

[fiveyearslater]

Wow thanx! I want to get a thicker and fatter guitarsound and I think I'll need other pre-amps for that than the Behringer's. What pre-amps would you recommend? Focusrite? Joe Meek?