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Hi folks, just curious what your solutions are in this situation:
Drummer I play with a lot finally finished his home studio and we did some recording this weekend. His studio is one room, with a drumkit. We recorded with bass and guitar going direct into the console, to avoid bleeding in the drum mics. Monitoring is therefore thru headphones.
Drummer prefers to record the guitar as dry as possible and do all editing (effects, reverb, amp sims, etc.) later, because processing the sound real time and feed it back to my headphones uses a lot of processing power and also results in some latency.
Now we probably all know that plugging a guitar directly into a mixer does not sound nice. We tried, but as I expected, the sound is so different than I'm used to that I can't really get into it and I couldn't manage to play something I liked. (So far, I mostly recorded in the studio using one of my tube amps mic-ed.)
I then used my Joyo American Sound preamp pedal that has a speaker simulated output and a little bit of reverb (Boss FRV-1 pedal). That worked much better (I know, I have recorded with it before) but it still is not my prefered sound and I really miss an amplifier. So now I am looking at analog/real time solutions in the form of preamps/pedalboard amps and speaker simulators (Quilter Superblock, H&K AmpMan Classic and DSM Simplifier for example).
What are your solutions for this situation? Do you get satisfactory results without using an amp? What role do good earphones or in-ears play? Would love to see your insights!
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10-11-2022 05:51 AM
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Use a splitter and a long cable and stick an amp in a different room for your monitoring (or the track itself).
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some iconic wes montgomery records on riverside have the guitar plugged directly into the console. so it's possible to get a good sound.
Originally Posted by Little Jay
otherwise can you get a long cable and put the amp in a different room or in the hallway? good earphones, yes. i have no experience with in-ears.
i use a tonemaster deluxe which solves this problem.
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Thought about that, but it's not really an option because then the amp would be in the non-sound isolated part of his house, with a chance of bothering the missus and the neighbours.... Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
Isolated cab perhaps....
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Yeah, if you really prefer the live sound of an amp and it affects your playing, it isn't a big deal to isolate a cab somehow.
I'm an organist in an apartment and I have my leslie in my closet as an iso booth and I just stick my mic in there and it works great. I use a condenser so I don't need to use as much volume.
The other side of the coin is I also practice recording direct since it is so unforgiving and forces me to focus on my rhythms.
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Really? I know there are Wes recordings where he has a very thinny sound that I don't really like.... I hope it's not those recordings..... Originally Posted by djg
Not really an option, like I posted above, because of practical limitations Originally Posted by djg
That has a speaker simulated recording out? And you can switch off the speaker then? Originally Posted by djg
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Originally Posted by Little Jay
- Impulse Response
- XLR Line-Ausgang mit Boxensimulation
- Mute-Schalter
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Cool! Now I just need to convince him to buy a Tonemaster Deluxe for his studio Originally Posted by djg
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Record direct (D.I.) - then you can re-amp, which is simply to use a D.I unit in reverse (to reverse the impedance from line level to what an amp expects from a guitar output).
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But this involves an amp, right? I can not use an amp.... Originally Posted by princeplanet
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Those were most probably tube consoles back then, so you could try a tube pre-amp for direct recording before the A/D converters. There are some inexpensive small ones which have only a small tube in the circuit for warmth but try them out before you buy one, I remember having noise and hum problems once with a cheap Behringer I own — that was with my acoustic flat top’s built-in Fishman piezo. I have heard good things about the ones from ART (I mean those table top ones in the up to 200 EUR/USD range) but again: try before you buy. Originally Posted by djg
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Not in that house maybe, but somewhere else. A laptop, an interface and a D.I. unit is all you'll need. Originally Posted by Little Jay
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i'd live with the bleeding then. it was good enough for rudy van gelder. Originally Posted by Little Jay
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Nah, you will be sadly disappointed with how "subtle" the tube pre affects the direct sound. Of course this difference is exaggerated (hopefully in a pleasing way) if it's processed further or re-amped, but the tube pre on it's own won't do much. However, if you choose to abuse the right kind of tube pre (like the Telefunken V72 etc), then the distortions can get very obvious. Whether or not this type of distortion is appropriate will depend on a thousand factors, but just know that all tube preamps do not sound the same when pushed to overdrive. Most of the new knock offs just don't have the mojo, and there are many, many reasons for this. Originally Posted by Bop Head
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Currently looking ar these:
Does anybody have experience with using these in the studio for direct recording?
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In that situation I think it will always be hard to use an amp, because of bleeding into the drummers mic.
If you're problem is just the final sound, there's a simple solution: get a pedal with a "dry out", like the Para Driver Di or the EHX Pog, and record two guitar tracks: 1) the dry output of the pedal 2) the joyo one. Number 1 would be used aftwerads with good plugins to get a much better sound than the Joyo and Number 2 just for monitoring while you record. This is actually a good idea in the studio anyway, a lot of the times one is not happy with the guitar's recorded sound and havind a dry track can save you in those cases.
If the Joyo really can't provide you a satisfactory sound while you record, then the question is more tricky. You could buy a better sounding solution, spend a lot of money, and in the end find you really need an amp... If that ends up being the case, I guess you could try to find a way where an amp would provide you minimal bleeding to the drums mic?
Personally I enjoy a good digital sound's rig much better than any amp and learning to record without an amp is always a good idea for guitar players, it does make things much easier for everyone. And there are rigs that can sound much better than the Joyo and as good as any amp, IMHO.
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There's a lot of good digital guitar amp simulators these days. All of them will work great in a direct recording situation like that.
I use a Fractal Fm3 which i like a lot. Kemper is also an alternative. Boss has the GT1000. Line6 has the Helix.
The good thing about these units is that you can choose what speaker cabinets you want emulated, what kind of amp sounds you want, what kind of reverb etc.
They do take some tweaking to get good sounds out of though..
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To add some more: The Tech 21 stuff has a very good reputation as well — at least in rock circles. But I do know if anyone has used it for Jazz where most of the time a (at least rather) clean sound is desired. Originally Posted by Little Jay
Currently looking ar these:
Does anybody have experience with using these in the studio for direct recording?
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Thanks for your eleborate answer, Jorge! The goal is indeed to have a satisfactory sound on my headphones while recording since once it is recorded you can use all the VST-plugins with effects, cab and amp sims you want. I have recorded an album before (this one: This Is Eva la Voix - YouTube) with my tube amp mic-ed, in a situation where we recorded everything at once more the way Van Gelder did it I guess. The sound was perfect. Now in this new situation the Joyo kind of did the job but doesn't deliver me the sound that I want on my ears (it is also very hard to get a clean sound without any drive, since it is foremost intended as a drive pedal). Originally Posted by jorgemg1984
I don't want to spent big $$ on a Kemper or the like, I suspect those would be great but I am not a professional studio musician.... but I might consider investing around $300 for the options I found above.
I will dive into the reviews of those devices and see if that can help me make an assesment about if they would contribute to my goal of a more inspirational sound on my headphones while recording.
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If you want to mic an amp in the same room as the drummer, just put a sound barrier around it. They run from $50 foam boxes to $150 acrylic shields and upwards from there. Positioning and careful control of volume will greatly reduce bleed in both directions.
Put a highly directional mic on the amp and a drum kit shield will do the same thing st significantly higher cost. But it’s a lot easier to control our volume than a drummer’s
I’ve been very very happy with the SuperBlock and the Blu for direct recording. I get a fine jazz tone from my archtops, and it’s more than decent from the neck p’up on my solids. As I’ve posted before, I usually use my TASCAM handheld recorder as a DAI and plug directly into it for a tone close to what I get from the SB and Blu.
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It's really a pleasure to help, Jay - always enjoyed your posts and clips around here.
I have never tried this pedal but, if I had money right now, I would buy it.
Torpedo C.A.B. M+ - Two notes
It's around 300 euros and it has reverb, tuner, eq, lots of impulse responses and a phones out. So you can actually dial a sound you like at your house trough your heaphones, and replicate it at the studio. It also has an XLR out, which I find preferible over a jack out to go into a mxier - you need a lot less gain and even on cheap mixers those XLR inputs have a mic preamp that makes the sound warmer. It doesn't have a preamp per se but you can use the Joyo before it solely as a preamp (I'm assuming the speaker emulation on the Joyo can be turned off). Or you can try any other simple preamp pedal - I've had great results with a Barber Barb EQ or the "Polyclone" - but i bet something like a Xotic RC Booster with the gain on zero would work fine.
The main difference to the Joyo would be the reverb and a much better speaker emulation - which makes a world of a difference IMO. I believe you could dial a great sound with the stock impulse responses but you can add 3rd party ones if you need, I have some great custom made ones I could send you, if needed. (It also has power amp emulations that may help)
Axe-fx and Kemper are great tools, but for a clean sound I always found you only need a preamp pedal, reverb and a good digital impulse response. For other tones, it's a whole other thing, of course... In the end, with a setup like this, you may not even need to trough plugins!
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This could also be a great solution. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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If you could imagine going the digital route there is MOD Devices from Berlin whose MOD Duo X features an SPDIF digital output that you possibly could connect to a digital input of the soundcard in that home studio (which means no quality loss by additional digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversion like with other boxes). The processing power is then outsourced to the specialized and fine-tuned Linux distribution inside the solid built table-top unit with close to zero latency (maybe I should write ads LOL). In addition to the very good amp emulations and effects from the Linux audio-versum you get crazy stuff like guitar synths that you could maybe use for other projects.
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You can definitely get clean tones out of a Sansamp. Just keep the drive control on 0 or close to it. It works with all three amp models; they'll be clean just with different voicings. Originally Posted by Bop Head
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Have you used direct boxes? Not the complete solution, but does provide a direct out xlr and a "thru" for 1/4' jacks. And they are pretty inexpensive.
For instance, guitar to direct box input and then,
direct box xlr out to mixer channel, say channel 1 for example, then mixer to DAW for direct recording,
direct box "thru" to joyo pedal (or any other guitar pedal or amp), out from pedal to mixer channel, say channel 2 for example, and you monitor thru that channel.
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