Guitar Amp for Recording

[jonmatifa]

I basically want to run a small guitar combo amp for recording purposes to run guitar (obviously) and other things such as synths for a move diverse sound. I would want a pretty clean sounding amp because I think I'd use my POD on it as well. What are some good amps for this, the trick is it doesn't have to be loud per se, but sound good at decent recording volume.

[Billster]

I love my Fender Vibro-Champ for this purpose. It's not crystal-clear clean sounds - more of a vintage sound, but you can push it really hard with a Tube Screamer/overdrive pedal.

 

I've never played one, but people speak very highly of the Reverend amps. Unfortunately, Reverend just ceased production

[UstadKhanAli]

The thing that throws me here is that you want to record keyboards.

 

For guitars, I've been using a Carr Rambler. I absolutely love it. It has pentode/triode (14/28 watt), and sounds gorgeous at all volume levels. A beautiful recording and gigging amp.

 

For keyboards, I usually record through a P.A. system, and don't like the way keyboards sound through most guitar amps. If you must do this, you can get either a small keyboard amp (because your POD would sound pretty good through this) or, if it must be a guitar amp, a Roland MC120.

[Lee Knight]

Over on Gearslutz a guy answered this question by recommending a Heathkit Signal Tracer. It a test piece that happens to run on a 12ax7, etc. and includes a little speaker. Apparrently there's a simple mod to convert it to an amp.

 

I just got one on e-abay for 19 bucks. Once I get it up and running I'll report back. Supposedly this little guy rocks for the app you're describing.

 

As to the amp and keyboard deal, I love doing that for 70's style combo keyboards like Clav, Rhodes, Wurly, and Pianet. A Blues Jr. is what I usually use for that... or the amp sim Trash.

[patshep]

i wish i could afford a rambler, great amp, i would suggest a small fender tube amp.. or possibly a thd univalve or groove tubes soul-o, because you can change the type of tubes in these, and cabinets.. giving a lot of diverse sounds.. i'm currently using a koch twintone, which is nice, but loud for the home studio environment

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Originally posted by patshep i wish i could afford a rambler, great amp, i would suggest a small fender tube amp..

 

 

I think those small Fender tube amps are great. They record well.

 

I almost bought one of those, but I got a really great deal on the Rambler, which is also barely over 40 pounds but can still fill a room with sound, part of the reason I also got it.

 

I always see reviews in Guitar Player for small amps like this, so maybe you can fish through some back issues or in the back.

[guitwizz]

Even though its not a standalone amp, the H&K "tubeman" has been the best sound direct recording unit I have ever heard....and I dont even own one, it was a friend that owned it.

 

and it OWNS!!

[jonmatifa]

About the keyboards, the reason I brought this point up is because I've experimented with running my keyboard through my pod and then direct in again and feel that the results are promising. I actually even tried sending the pod out to one of my studio monitors and recorded off of that.... just sounded like I was getting the SM57 modifed signature sound in there, which is definately cool, but I'd also love to run it through a pretty sweet amp as well... I guess I'm just weird like that.

 

I just got one on e-abay for 19 bucks.

 

I'm all about that idea

[Phil O'Keefe]

I've got several tube amps, and all of them (except for one) are fairly "small" in size. If a client wants something bigger, they can bring their own rig.

 

I currently have:

 

A Fender Princeton II. I hand swapped all the resistors and capacitors with hand tested +/- 1% (or better) tolerance parts, and installed a DC heater mod, OFC wire, negative feedback kill switch, NOS Groove Tubes tubes, better reverb tank, and re-skinned it in blonde tolex with an oxblood grille.

 

A Fender Super Champ. I went pretty wild on that one - EL34 output section in Class A, Vox based tone stack (with a few custom mods), DC heater mod, negative feedback kill switch, OFC wire, better reverb tank, etc... Baby don't "do" clean anymore, but for slight crunch through raging agression, this puppy rawks.

 

A stock THD Univalve. I LOVE that head! I run it through a 2X12 Fender cab. They are very versatile, and great for a variety of different tones... as patshep mentioned, you can run a variety of different tubes in that without having to rebias. A very cool amp!

 

A '72 Twin. It's the 100W version (no Ultra Linear transformers) and first year master volume. I may "blackface" it.

 

Can you solder and follow easily understood directions? Then please stay tuned. I recently finished building two Guytronix amps. A Gilmore Jr and an Ardmore. Pro Reviews are on the way for both amps, with lots of pictures and clips. The Gilmore Jr is a 1/2 watt head in "stock" form, and also has a 2 watt mod available, which comprises a socket adapter and different output tube - you can swap between the two setups in about 30 seconds. The Ardmore is a 2 X EL84 design at 8 WRMS. Like I said, cool stuff for recording at "sane" levels; stay tuned for more info.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Originally posted by jonmatifa About the keyboards, the reason I brought this point up is because I've experimented with running my keyboard through my pod and then direct in again and feel that the results are promising. I actually even tried sending the pod out to one of my studio monitors and recorded off of that.... just sounded like I was getting the SM57 modifed signature sound in there, which is definately cool, but I'd also love to run it through a pretty sweet amp as well... I guess I'm just weird like that.

 

 

Now I'm intrigued. What sorts of sounds are you going after? I love micing keyboards, largely because it puts the keyboards in a space again, gives it body and girth and depth, makes it move air. I used a P.A. most of the time for this, and then sometimes messed up the sound by putting the speaker in interesting places or putting the microphone in strange places (in the washer/dryer, for instance) or putting cardboard tubes around the mic.

[Lee Knight]

 

Originally posted by UstadKhanAli Now I'm intrigued. What sorts of sounds are you going after? I love micing keyboards, largely because it puts the keyboards in a space again, gives it body and girth and depth, makes it move air. I used a P.A. most of the time for this, and then sometimes messed up the sound by putting the speaker in interesting places or putting the microphone in strange places (in the washer/dryer, for instance) or putting cardboard tubes around the mic.

 

 

Using an amp (for me) is more akin to the old groups I saw in the 70's using electric keys. Little Feat, The Tubes, The Band, etc. A Clav is not the same clean as it is with the limitations of a nice tube twin... same for the Wurly and Pianet.

[CN Fletcher]

We're running a Madison "Divinity" head into either a Madison "MAG 412" cabinet or an old Marshall "1960" cabinet with some custom speakers made for me by Weber VST... we also have a custom MusicMan HD-130 that is one of 18 made by Andy Topeka for Aerosmith in the mid 70's... a THD "UniValve" which also runs with the Madison or Marshall cabinets... and a Groove Tubes amp that switches tubes [little combo thing]... and an "Oahu" which a friend of mine makes a few of each year... the only two other guys I know who have one are "Roscoe" Ambel [steve Earle and the Dukes] and Keith Richards [guess]... we also have a small Silvertone I found in an antique shop for $5- and a couple of other odds and ends.

 

The fact of the matter is that if you have a good player you can plug them into any of it and it sounds like heaven... if you have a {censored}ty player [like me for example] you can plug them into any of it and it sounds like total ass!!

[seaneldon]

ive got some cool amps that i frequently force bands to use.

 

'63 Fender Bassman piggyback that I've dubbed "The Blonde Bombshell"

'65 Twin Reverb

Orange AD30HTC head with 2x12 cabinet

 

I just sold an AC30 handwired and a Carr Rambler. Very close to regretting that.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Originally posted by Fletcher@mercenary.com The fact of the matter is that if you have a good player you can plug them into any of it and it sounds like heaven... if you have a {censored}ty player [like me for example] you can plug them into any of it and it sounds like total ass!!

 

 

Yeah, a good amp basically amplifies someone's crappy playing better.

~~~~~~~~~~

On a completely different note, a bad guitar can make a bad guitarist sound even worse!

[Phil O'Keefe]

Hey Fletcher, do you ever run the Univalve in front of one of your other amps? IMO Andy did a really good job on that tranny-siolated line output!

 

BTW, that brings up a question... I know where some of your listening preferences sit, but what type of stuff / genres do you usually record? In all the years I've "known" you, I don't think I've ever asked you that...

[UstadKhanAli]

Here's one that I've heard that Fletcher's recorded:

 

http://www.mercenary.com/blacnumninse.html

 

Here's the description from Mercenary Audio's web site:

 

 

Black Number Nine

 

The album that should have been recorded between Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street...chopped and channeled Delta Blues, with even a guest appearance by J.Geils frontman Peter Wolf. Mercenary's first full in-house production shows off three mic drum sounds, ribbon mics on guitars, what musicians sound like when you don't put them in headphones, and makes for some fine accompaniment while sipping bourbon.

 

"They don't make rock and roll bands like this anymore." SLASH, ex Guns-N-Roses

[CN Fletcher]

 

Originally posted by Phil O'Keefe type of stuff / genres do you usually record?

 

 

My usual answer to that question is "both kinds... country AND western".

 

I honestly don't care Phil...music is music. Somehow, by the end of the project I will have found something about the music that inspires me to push myself to attain whatever it is that the artist wants to have happen for the music... though I do, like pretty much every other piece of equipment involved in the process, have "a sound"... which is guess best described as kinda 'old school', maybe 'ambient', perhaps 'boxy'... something like that.

 

This is a link to some of the BNN stuff... this is some "El Camino" stuff... which has a whole bunch of different guitar sounds ["Lonesome" and "Lawd Have Mercy" have only the guitar player in common]... though both records show my propensity to overuse "room sounds"... but the "rooms" are all machine generated on Axis-2 and the drummer on that stuff was way better than the guitar player [remember, I'm an asshole] so I think I went a bit drum heavy on the final presenation...

 

The BNN record was kinda a bunch of friends getting together with way too much Bourbon and enough Budweiser to fill a small, above ground swimming pool while trying to make sense out of a friend of ours' death so we got drunk and did a record that we thought he might have liked... the EC stuff was what the band wanted... +/-3db. Axis-2 is an entirely different genre which isn't all that guitar oriented... but there's some guitars in there somewhere.

 

As for the UniValve... nope, haven't tried it in that way yet but may sometime in the future. We're just getting the new control room on line.

 

Sorry to hijack this thread... it wasn't intentional.

[patshep]

for studios, i think it's fun to buy a bunch of small, cheap amps .. old gibsons, ampegs etc, are great values, and have really cool distinctive sounds.. i sold my old ampeg reverbrocket, because it was noisy to record, and fragile to take to gigs, now i want another

[skunky_funk]

[offramp]

billster beat me to it. I use a '71 Vibro-Champ, usually with my POD plugged into both inputs. If I want to go full stereo, I put the other POD output into a '60 Harvard.

 

I recently tracked an organ patch out of my XP-80 into the Vibro-Champ and mic'd it, with excellent results.

[offramp]

 

Originally posted by jonmatifa About the keyboards, the reason I brought this point up is because I've experimented with running my keyboard through my pod and then direct in again and feel that the results are promising. I actually even tried sending the pod out to one of my studio monitors and recorded off of that.... just sounded like I was getting the SM57 modifed signature sound in there, which is definately cool, but I'd also love to run it through a pretty sweet amp as well... I guess I'm just weird like that.

 

 

 

Not weird at all. In my scenario mentioned above, one output went to the VibroChamp, mic'd, and the other went direct into the MOTU 896.

[elamberth]

Anybody here use the Tech 21 amps? I record quite a bit with the Tech 21 TM 60,and use it live. Very versatile, great sound and a great deal of sounds. More my taste than the POD. Les Paul uses them now, I believe. I always mic it though, I think the direct out is too noisy for me.

 

You can check out sounds here:

 

http://www.tech21nyc.com/tm60.html

 

[harbong]

I am using two tm10s, they sound good to me. I'm looking into getting some champs/princetons though in the future.

[rog951]

Holy crap, I LOVE my new Vox AC30CC head. To me, this amp sounds like rhythm guitar on a record...especially with single coils. It's probably too loud for a lot of smaller project studios though. Hell, it's just too loud period! I'm getting a hotplate or something. The master volume is one of the better I've heard, but it still sucks away some tone.

[Will Chen]

Originally posted by elamberth Anybody here use the Tech 21 amps? I record quite a bit with the Tech 21 TM 60,and use it live. Very versatile, great sound and a great deal of sounds. More my taste than the POD. Les Paul uses them now, I believe. I always mic it though, I think the direct out is too noisy for me. You can check out sounds here: http://www.tech21nyc.com/tm60.html

 

I have the Trademark 60 and love it. I agree, very versatile. I disagree that the direct sends are noisy, although I mostly mic it (use a J-Station and an TRI AC for direct)

 

I thought for a long time that my amp was noisy but I found out 3 things one day around my home studio...

 

1) The halogen lamp in an adjoining room was causing some hum. I make sure I turn it off prior to tracking.

 

2) Placing the amp right up against a wall in front of an AC outlet caused a good deal of hum. Moved it and things got better.

 

3) The direct out has a ground lift switch...