Recording through amps

[Cheez]

I have a question. Not being a recording engineer, I need some insight into recording electric guitars and basses.

What is the signal chain from the instrument to the mixer/DAW like? Do you record directly (analog) from the amp or do you record using a mic aiming at the amp? Or do you actually record the clean signal then process it using plugins?

The reason of me asking is because I don't actually record "real" instruments but softsamplers. I'm wondering if I should get processed guitars and basses samples (ie with amp already processed) or if I should get a clean sound and process the sound using modelled amp plugins. Wondering which will give me the best effects.

Thanks!

 

[blueprintstudios]

yo cheez,

yes for your questions, it's "yes" for all of them. sometimes I even use all aspects and combine them together (more mixing work)

the clean sound and process via software method gives you flexibility.
but the processed sound samples may sound better than what you can process as they probably gone through killer amps/mics/preamps etc and specially mixed before they were sold off as samples.

so depends on the genre you're composing, you may wanna still stick to what you do best "samples" on.vsts like virtual guitarist etc.

 

[Cheez]

Problem with getting processed samples is that I will need to get various different types of them to make sure I can use it across genres. If I have a clean sample, an amp plugin gives me versatility. Of course, as you said, I'm concerned about the quality of the latter. Obviously, processed ones are probably better. I currently have NI's Guitar Rig 3 and I'm wondering about IK Multimedia's stuff.

Quick question on the signal chain - do you actually mic the amp? That means place a mic in front of the amp? Or do you connect the amp directly into your mixer? Do you do the same for guitar and bass or differently? Trying to emulate the real thing as close as possible without the actual instrument (ie samples). Thanks!

 

[echoist]

Hi Cheez!

I was looking at your question and clicked to your link at your signature to listen/know the guitar sounds you want/do. But heard nice piano music instead... Great stuff btw. Like listening to movie soundtracks...

This is what i read in a guitar mag:
Most producers (nowadays) usually record a few signals at the same time. The miked amp/cabinets (after finding the best/sweet spots), the amp D.I.ed (without cabs) and a clean signal (guitar direct clean). If the miked sound is not "usable/perfect", they'll use the D.I. signal and uses plugins to simulate cabs/ambience/room, or the clean signal and uses plugins to create amps/cabs/mics/ambience. Or used either/or two/or all together... But usually, they opt for miked amp/cabs. :roll:

This is what i normally do:
I use the ToneportGX with Gearbox (Line 6 usb interface+software) to record. But, i record 2 signals at the same time: one processed through Gearbox (amp/cab sim+stompboxes efx) and clean (guitar direct). Each signal goes to different tracks in Ableton Live. I will then use the clean signal and plugins to get amp/cab sounds i want/like. The processed sound is usually used for "listening while recording only" to get the vibe/feel... Though i occasionally uses them.

Of course those solutions might not work for you... But since you own Guitar Rig 3 (i'm envious!) you can give it a shot... If not, blueprintstudios' suggestion for processed sampled sounds is another great choice/option. :mrgreen:

 

[blueprintstudios]

cheez : yes I do actually mike the amp. infact like I said earlier I combine multiple sources.
1) D.I sound (either from guitar or from amp head or my behringer vamp pro)
2) Guitar amp miked : dynamic mic
3) guitar amp miked : condenser mic
4) *sometimes I use up to 3 mics.

whether is it for guitar and bass thats my pattern badminton la. more flexibility.

NI Guitarrig 3 is good stuff, I think you're good to go with it because the whole "amp mike up" thing is harder to mix with room acoustics in consideration etc. their presets will do fine enough heheh

 

[Cheez]

Blueprintstudio, thanks. A little blur here for me. Please be patient with me for a little longer...

Mixing the different sources sounds interesting. By combining the different sources (ie DI, and various mics from the amp), I would imagine the end-result being pretty different from a person who listens live. Does the guitarist have a say in how he wants the final mix to sound like (as I imagine what he hears when he plays would be very different from what you hear)? And, if it's OK to share, what's your formula for the mix (ie how many percent DI and how many percent from the other mics)? There's usually a favorite setting, right? OK to not share if it's a trade secret!

This has lots of bearings for me. That may mean I would have to mix "virtually" using different types of mic setups + DI thrown in. Also means more CPU resources etc.

Echoist, interesting that you would use the clean sound and the processed for listening/monitoring. What plugins do you use? Do you get the results close to the original processed sound? How difficult to achieve is that?

What you heard from my site is music done ages ago. I've got music with guitar/bass but not on the site. Because I'm not an electric guitar player (although I do play acoustic guitar), I'm not very familar with the different amps/cabinets and the sounds they make. I usually use the clean Strat sound in my music. But I need to breakthrough and learn more to get different sounds, in particular with e guitar and basses. That's not my area - my area is more acoustic/symphonic. Hence the learning curve.

Actually, the orchestral piece you heard is one of the first that I tried experimenting with different mixing. It was recorded in 3 passes into 3 audio tracks (although I have 30+ midi tracks involved). Different reverb was added to different "rows" of the orchestra sitting so I get a further sound for the brasses and percussion and nearer sounds for the strings etc. After applying different reverb to the "3 rows" of different distance, an overall reverb is applied to the entire mix to merge the sound getting it to sound together. Today, samples are easier to use as the instruments/sections were sampled with ambience and in their correct positions (not just panned, but distance-wise). It makes things much easier.

 

[echoist]

Echoist, interesting that you would use the clean sound and the processed for listening/monitoring. What plug-ins do you use? Do you get the results close to the original processed sound? How difficult to achieve is that?

Hi Cheez!

Ohh, usually i try to get sounds quickly with the Gearbox and record straight away... Those tones usually sounds great during the recording process. But usually when i start to lay down the mix, (with drum loops+bass+another guitar) it might not sound great after all. And trying to "make" a better sound out of that track will be difficult (if not near impossible). So the best way is to record 2 signals and use the clean one with plugins to get the "right sound".

Why not use the plug-ins and record straight away? Well, 1stly its the latency problem - makes it impossible to play/record, and 2ndly i'd rather use the "processed sound" as a rough recording and take my time with getting the right sound with plug-ins later on. But at times, there might be "processed sounds" that i'm happy with. So i'll just use it... Maybe mixed/layered with "efx'd clean sound" to cover different frequencies/tone to get a bigger or tighter sound.

Plug-ins wise, i go for FREE ones. Amp sims are usually Juicy77, Guitar Suite and Studio Devil. (Juice77 and Guitar Suite are Wins only, so i get the sounds in my Wins machine and later, render into disk and transport into the Mac.) I usually use the tone controls of those plug-ins rather than eq's. Other effects (delays, modulation, reverbs) are a mesh of Ableton Live's native effects. You mentioned owning Guitar Rig 3, that's great for "nearly everything" i believe... Ohhh, you can hear the Studio Devil plug-in here: http://purevolume.com/mrecho the 1st track, left and right guitars.

Actually, the orchestral piece you heard is one of the first that I tried experimenting with different mixing. It was recorded in 3 passes into 3 audio tracks (although I have 30+ midi tracks involved). Different reverb was added to different "rows" of the orchestra sitting so I get a further sound for the brasses and percussion and nearer sounds for the strings etc. After applying different reverb to the "3 rows" of different distance, an overall reverb is applied to the entire mix to merge the sound getting it to sound together.

In fact, you can apply that same theory into your guitar recordings! Just use different takes of your guitar (or D.I.s, mikings, amps) and merge/layer them together for bigger/"together" sound. Or what i usually do is (when i have left and right guitars) play with the pick-up selector or tone controls of the guitar and record them at different takes... When you lay them together in the mix, you can distinctly "hear" different tones...

Ehhh, sorry for the long-winded post.
Hopefully it don't bore you, and you find something useful here... :mrgreen:

 

[Cheez]

Thanks! That's helpful. Of course, plugin amps will never sound the same as the real deal. Wouldn't the guitarist and bass guitarist complain that they don't sound the same?

I've not installed Guitar Rig 3 yet. Still trying to get my 64-bit PC working. It's still sitting in the nice NI DVD box with the rest of Komplete 5. Got it during the 30% discount that just ended. Excellent deal. However, NI tends to bloat and tax CPU/RAM. I'm wondering how it fairs against IK Multimedia's Amplitude 2. Anybody tried both?

 

[blueprintstudios]

cheez : it's all cool man. if I had midi questions you'd be one of the first person that I'd ask and by that time i'll be asking for your patience haha.

yes indeed the end result is different from live. this all depends on the guitarist/bassist preference of tone, sometimes they don't want it to sound "live" , they usually have this say "oh I love the sound of this iron maiden guitars." and we'd work towards that sound and skip any form of recording that wouldn't come close to that sound like probably the raw guitar DI sound. some want sounds that are a mixture of distortion/overdrive but "clean" mixed in together. and of course end of the day, it depends on the amp used the mics I have and the guitars setup and the player. we can only make the best out of the worst we got compared to the real deal. esp when i'm mobile recording.
and yes myself I give the band a say in the sound rather than run through template-sounds (most of the studios have their own sound), because end of the day they are the paying client. even if their choice of tone sucks ,you just gotta mix the best compromise between band , mixing engineer (myself) , and the audience (as producer).
and of course there are times the guitarist doesn't know much about "music producing" , like if the guitarist is heavily metal influenced (iron maiden) for example and he plays in a alternative pop rock band. the sound is just going to turn out really weird. metal high gain guitars on an alt pop rock band. so that would be the case where I step in and say "i know you like that sound but that is not going to work. go form a metal band and find me again."

as for percentage formula, there really isn't a fixed one, i may use 25-25-25-25%, I may use 100-100-100-100, but bring all the volumes to level. , or each with different compression/gate off. like if a song has alot of palm muted riffs, but guitarist has abit of overdrive + delay pedal going there, he doesn't want the palm mute riff to sound too muffled by the overdrive, he wants each note to be heard clearly via the delay pedal. so how? usually the "clean raw guitar DI" riff + delay sounds clearer, so just as an example I'd gate + compression (add the attack) of each note on the clean guitar track. and then the one with the overdrive will have lesser attack. so combined it should be what he wants like :
|----------------------within like 0.5 seconds, one note played--------------|
jeng(cleandelay).gated.+jeng(overdrivedelay) the "resonance/sustain/watever"

so end of the day, my "TRADE SECRET" (if it's considered) would be "if there's an idea with a problem, don't correct yourself with written theories on how it's impossible. f*ck up on purpose, then rephrase theories to correct that problem to possibility."
a person who hasn't failed once in his life probably hasn't succeeded in anything too.
alot of my influence comes from the quote of thomas edison -
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

earlier on I mentioned condenser/dynamic/DI to record etc, condenser mics can't be put too close for risk of damaging the mics. so think of DI+condenser mics (recording for high frequencies) and dynamic mic (recording for high mid / mid frequencies) , and if the song has alot of "low tone guitar riffs" some even resort to using a kickdrum mic. so this one is just a situation of having access to different "frequencies" of the sound source. record now dump it later. you may never know what works.

as you know I use cool edit. I understand how almost every mixing engineer mixes is via "real time" , put a plugin/vst and listen preview "live", utilizing cpu resources/ram. for me actually I don't even need more than 1gb ram. I actually process the sound permanently (of course keeping a raw backup) so I barely use any cpu resources. I think what they call it in cubase is "freezing" or something. it's very inconvenient as advised by many of my friends but heck, if it works, why not? this method made mobile mixing on my asus EEE 4G possible too.

hope this's of help, whatever I've shared is quite generic, but should give you a wide range of ideas like it did for me.

 

[seekz]

Okay, another question.

How to achieve that "big" sound?

Cos even when I record with a close mike(sm57) and then another Large diagphram ambient mic. It still sounds like... So different...
Well the obvious truth being "shit in - shit out" but I love the sound
of a 12" guitar speakers chugging away, but can't seem to get it into
the recording with out POST-Eq.


So I need a kick drum mike to record "chugging" guitars?

 

[blueprintstudios]

hi seekz

erm that "big" sound you're talking about, whichever song's recording you heard, have gone through thousands of dollars (5 digits) of room acoustic treatment/mics/preamps/adda/audio interface + highly experienced individual's mixing where all the "TRADE SECRET" post processing techniques used which is another few 5 digits of rack processors (compressor/eq/reverb unit etc)

I myself may not be able to get that "big sound" which you mentioned so i'm in no position to say anything without overrating myself.

that "chugging big sound" that you said may just simply be compression/efx doing its work. not "kick drum" mic. sorry if anything i said has been misleading.

 

[Sean]

Cheez,

If you do not want to commit to the guitar tone you have on the spot. You have a few choices actually...

Since you already have Guitar Rig, I would recommend the Radial X-Amp...using one myself. What this thing does is taking your already recorded clean guitar signal and re-amp it back to an amplifier. Alot more work...but worth it if you got some really nice tube amp later on.

X-Amp Link:
http://www.radialeng.com/pdfs/smartsheet-xamp.pdf


Another one would be getting the Radial J48 DI or Radial JDV and X-Amp. The DI will split your guitar signal to two output, one clean signal(for re-amp later) and the other one to an amplifier.

The expensive all-in-one option would be the JD7.

JD7 Link:
http://www.radialeng.com/di-jd7.htm

Hope I don't sound like a Radial saleman. hehehe.....

You can check out these two other manufacturer

Reamp http://www.reamp.com/ and from

Little Labs http://www.littlelabs.com/pip.html

 

[seekz]

Yeah... But I always kinda thought that Post processing is like
icing on a cake. My gripe is with getting the good into the daw
rather than getting the good out of the recorded sample.

Because I'm in the business of making pedals, I want the recorded
sound to sound like what its suppose to sound, or people will
think I'm a cheat tryin to sugar up my sound samples with
post processing.

 

[blueprintstudios]

hmm that means your recording has to be as "life-like" and as uncoloured as possible... seldom go for that.. haha. but i forgot, I read somewhere you can roughly achieve the "amp" 's sound by putting 2 SM57's, one aiming straight in the cone centre, and the other one aiming diagonally (30degrees) downwards. both mic's tip kissing each other. sorta like " :

<) /_ <-- sorry bad representation haha. <) = speaker cone. then aim the 2 SM57s in a "V" form . make sure the "_" is aiming at the centre. don't have pix or anything to demonstrate

 

[VCO]

erm that "big" sound you're talking about, whichever song's recording you heard, have gone through thousands of dollars (5 digits) of room acoustic treatment/mics/preamps/adda/audio interface + highly experienced individual's mixing where all the "TRADE SECRET" post processing techniques used which is another few 5 digits of rack processors (compressor/eq/reverb unit etc)

Hi seekz
Getting the "big" sound (on recording) starts from the microphone with large diaphragm condenser type. of course entry model & expensive ones have that big difference, in terms of tone, depth & timbre. But if you use a good pre-amp, a cheap entry large diaphragm can also achieve that extended tonality & depth of the sound (big).
I have mentioned in some the thread b4, you have to experiement. I did a recording on a peavey bandit gtr amp with three mics, one frt, one rear & one ambience (all large diaphg), u will noe wat is big sound if u hear the play back on the mixing desk. Now, an experience sound engineer is needed to craft the mix. The big sound must also fit into yr music as well. Good luck!

 

[blueprintstudios]

VCO : do you have sample of that recording of the peavey bandit? very interested to check it out

 

[fibredrive]

I have a question. Not being a recording engineer, I need some insight into recording electric guitars and basses.

What is the signal chain from the instrument to the mixer/DAW like? Do you record directly (analog) from the amp or do you record using a mic aiming at the amp? Or do you actually record the clean signal then process it using plugins?

Thanks!

I've experimented with a few methods of recording guitars and I found the best one, for my room acoustics at least, was simply a single SM57 off-axis double tracked. I've tried the abovementioned techniques and also using a combination of LDCs and SM57 with different placements.

At the end of the day, to achieve what I thought (IMHO) was a nice chugga chugga (and many A/Bs with my fav chugga chugga album from Breaking Benjamin), I record 2 different distortion/crunch channels on my amp, double tracked and panned at 100% and abt 65% respectively. And for my amp, I also realized it has to be beyond a certain volume to get a nice tone, to the dismay of my neighbours...

accordingly, my chain is simply Amp --> SM57 --> SP VTB1 Preamp --> Mixer --> Soundcard. I have a TC Electronics M350 in my amp's FX loop.

I've just finished a song with a chugga guitar tone i am happiest with after so many years of trial and error. I definitely still use some post-EQ like a cut at about 125hz and slight boost at 4khz etc etc. cheers

 

[Cheez]

Hi Sean, thanks for the links. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, all my mix and recordings are virtual. I don't actually record guitars. The guitars/basses etc are played using a keyboard with samples. So there's no real external amp(s).

But I'm learning heaps from the various responses here. To get the sound, I need to know how a real guitar is miced, recorded, and processed. Looks like I really need to take a trip someday to a studio and see how you people do it.

 

[seekz]

yes yes, thanx for the tip! I'm learning alot here as well!
gotta go try it out

 

[blueprintstudios]

cheez :
"The guitars/basses etc are played using a keyboard with samples"
if so, then you're pretty much safe with NI Guitar Rig. if you wanna do some recording without involving another sessionist but still wanna use your samples = even better if you can play really raw guitar recorded sounding samples, combine what Sean has suggested

Sample.wav > soundcard > hiZ/loZ box > pedals/efx (hardware) > guitar amp > mic > xlr > soundcard again (your soundcard has to be multitracked capable, careful of feedbackloop. turn off monitoring) > DAW.

but the sample.wav must be as raw guitar sounding possible which makes room for more "colouring" , either a distortion pedal or effects etc whatever. if you use a sample which has already gone through pedal > amp > mic up > and you pedal>amp> mic up again it may sound weird.