Recording E guitars

[maxmartin]

Helloa!

 

I'm gonna record some E-Guitars soon and prior used a Line6 POD2 for the guitars.

 

Now i have a bigger separete recording room and i wanna record the EGuitars through the Amp.

 

Here's the gear i have to do that:

 

Mesa Boogie

Sure SM57

Avalon VT737

Euphonix CS3000

and damned good cables :-)

 

So can you give me some tips to get the best Guitar sound? Mic Positions etc.

btw. I have a Neumann U87 too but i think i wouldn't need it there, right?

 

 

Thanks for replies

[Watershed]

I posted this in Phil's old forum, so many will have seen it before.....

 

 

I have sent Phil the article that goes with these pics. It's a long-winded explanation for a simple technique, so Phil might be able to paraphrase it if he sees fit. Otherwise I can email it to you.

[maxmartin]

Hey!

 

Thanks a lot!

Would be great if you could send it to me via email!

 

best regards!

[Caevan O'Sh!te]

Cool... I'd like that info, as well,Watershed; if you don't mind goung to the bother.

 

Lemmee know if you need me to PM you my e-mail address, or if you can PM it to me, or what.

 

What is the source, by the way?

 

And, maxmartin- what do you mean by "E-Guitars"? Just, "Electric Guitars", or... something digital, or something?

 

Also- try using a little bittly amp like a "tweed" or "blakface" Fender Champ or similar unit, cranked-up, with or without some means of overdriving its input. Smaller speaker = bigger mic (in ratio of speaker-cone to mic-diaphram), and thus HUGE sound. (Just ask Frank Zappa (R.I.P.) and his Pignose, or E.C. and Duane and their 'Layla'-era "tweed" Champ and Deluxe rigs, etc...) Due to the proximity-effect of a close-mic (and the oft-mentioned Fletcher-Munson psychoacoustic "loudness" effect), the mic will "hear" a lot more bass and low-mids and wallop than you'll perceive from that little amp-speaker in the room, untill playback of the recording. Plus, the lower overall power and volume output of such amps are less likely to overpower the mic's element.

[blue2blue]

Someone will think I'm just being difficult but I think it's worth remembering what a lot of us seem to forget:

 

It's like a good drum sound.

 

If you want a good drum sound, start with a good drummer playing a good kit that's been properly tuned and set up.

 

After that, your job is pretty easy.

 

 

If you want a good guitar sound, start with good playing and an amp that sounds good in the room.

 

That may be considered overly facile advice, since a lot of folks seem to have a disconnect when it comes to capturing what they think they're hearing. When they listen back, they're confronted with sometimes uncomfortable realities. It's easy to feel like a guitar god when you've got a stack of effects playing themselves, you got your cans hanging on one ear just like you saw in some video (I actually got some cheapo consumer Sony earphones where the main selling point for the $20 cans was that you could reverse the earpiece and hold it up against your ear just like Justin Timberlake or whoever -- absoultely the most uncomfortable headphones I've worn since junior high language lab in 1964! I've said it a thousand times and someday I'm gonna make it stick: I'll never buy Sony again! )

 

 

Anyhow, when PB time comes (not PBR time, that's later) the player is often confronted between the gap between their dreams of grandeur and the sad reality of their limitations. (I'm talking from first hand experience, here, people. I'm on your side.)

 

[The only thing sadder are those poor souls who, even with documentary evidence, are not able to recognize their limitations. These, of course, are those strange creatures who pop up from time to time on various musical sites expounding about how they are one of the greatest up and coming talents on guitar but when push comes to shove and they actually put up examples of their music (all too often with a flurry of excuses about how the track in question really doesn't show off their protean greatness) the accumulated audience finds a ten-thumbed "shredder" who can't seem to find and keep the key and who has the uncanny ability to play thousands of notes without getting any of them on the rhythmic mark...]

[Caevan O'Sh!te]

blue2blue - YES!! Too funny, too true!

 

It's like that old saw- "the most important ingredient in any recipe is THE COOK." Of course, starting with some good basic ingredients and keeping it simple doesn't hurt any, either, does it?

 

Yhupp, there're those who seem to be able to sink to new heights of denial with each bit of damning proof put before them (and, unfortunately, put before the rest of us, as well!)

 

I am some one who not only notices a big difference between what I hear during playback and what I perceive while I'm playing any other time, but also often suffers from getting kinda stiff, uptight, and even tend to choke after I've hit "REC". Damn! Musta been that mic, that pickup, that cable... !!

[porph]

Originally posted by Caevan O'Sh!te blue2blue - YES!! Too funny, too true! It's like that old saw- "the most important ingredient in any recipe is THE COOK." Of course, starting with some good basic ingredients and keeping it simple doesn't hurt any, either, does it? Yhupp, there're those who seem to be able to sink to new heights of denial with each bit of damning proof put before them (and, unfortunately, put before the rest of us, as well!) I am some one who not only notices a big difference between what I hear during playback and what I perceive while I'm playing any other time, but also often suffers from getting kinda stiff, uptight, and even tend to choke after I've hit "REC". Damn! Musta been that mic, that pickup, that cable... !!

 

its always a hundred times better when you are recording yourself in your own time though! I used to get very nervous recording but these days i am very relaxed and can really put some energy into!

[Caevan O'Sh!te]

From my very meager experience, I think I can safely say that the problem (for me) lies in being both the guy who's hitting that red "REC"-button in one guise or another, AND the guy who's playing.

 

I don't get uptight like that if someone else is in the rec. engineer seat and I'm playing guitar or bass; not that I've done much of that at all, but the few times I have, it never even occurred to me that I might have gotten nervous. The track rolls, or others play, and I play along; I either do fine, or I muff, or i think I can do something to improve upon the previous iteration, but I don't get nervous or anything like that.

 

If I'm running my PC rec. software and starting the track recording and then playing on cue and then hitting "stop", etc., there's this ramping-up of tensions taking place; kinda like waiting for the lights in a drag-race... know what I mean?

 

Like that old saying, about how so many horse-races are lost in the gates...

[blue2blue]

Well, I've found when I've played 'session guitarist' for the odd client (and they have to be odd to... uh, never mind) that they tend to be a little more accepting than I would be as to quality of playing -- but that they tend to focus on specifically what they want more than I ever can if I'm 'producing' myself. (Too much time listening to and thinking about jazz... I always have the sense that the killer solo is right around the corner.) [Oh... and the notion that anyone would be more tolerant of sloppy playing than I might get a laugh from anyone who's heard my music. But I don't like to think of it as slop. I like to think of it as street cred.]

 

At least working on the computer has allowed me to save takes and compare them (although that can be a burden, too... I can play faster than I can listen. If you know what I mean. I have to sit there and listen to this one and listen to that one -- and, while there was often some of that in projects I worked on in commercial studios in the old days (tape, of course) when budgets permitted, the clock and pocketbook always reigned in creative dithering.

 

(I mean the meandering process kind of dithering -- not the process of adding noise to digital audio or graphics, of course. Although, one can imagine some real time-wastin' going on as a couple of ob-con producers and engineers sit and try one dithering algorithm after another... "I think that one would be good for death metal -- but the other one is clearly better suited for bossa nova and...")

 

Anyhow, I'm dithering... er, meandering... or, uh... what was that word? Oh yeah. Prattling.