Studio secrets revealed.



Matt, Dave and Brandon are here this week, dialing in sounds for the record. We always try to make the guitar tones better, so for this album the magic combo has been: Gibson Les Paul Gold top to a Radial labs JDV split to 2 amps: 1 mesa recording pre through a mesa 2 90 power amp to a 4 12 cab mic'd with an sm57 windscreen in front, through a mastering labs pre-amp through a distressor. The second send goes to a Marshall Slash amp, to a 4 10 cabinet, mic'd with a Rode NT2 no windscreen, to a vintech x73i to a distressor. Both the signals than go back to the board where we mix for taste. I don't think it's the holy grail of recording guitars, but it is better than what we had last album. For bass, we've been using a sansamp bass driver into a uad 2610, which is an improvement.. especially after we put new steel strings on the bass... the bass sounded terrible until I remembered that we hadn't changed the strings since the last record we did. woops. To re-iterate a piece of hard won wisdom that I've learned however, it's not about the gear, it's about the people. As was explained to me years ago, the way to get a great sound was this:

1. start with the best player you can find
2. have them write a great part for your song.
3. have them play a great instrument.
4. plug it in or mic it.

In that order. I'll take a fantastic player on a crappy instrument over a crappy player on a fantastic instrument any day of the week. If you're not a fantastic player, than build your own studio because time is the great equalizer. With enough practice and time, you can usually find and than record a great part. The great deadline bear in the sky looms over me, it's shadow blocking my light from the sun, so back to the studio I go. Oh. Hopefully soon, I will post more pictures as I have been instructed to write shorter entries and include more pictures to look at.

UPDATE: as I read this I realized I left out an important step in recording multiple cabinet guitars.. you have to get the 2 mics (the ones on each cabinet) in phase otherwise it sounds like crap. You can either use a box made by littlelabs to correct phase, or you can move one of the mics closer or farther away from the speaker till it's in phase with the other one. You can get it in phase by checking for cancelation. You do that by starting with one mic panned hard left and one hard right. You then play the guitar and listen to the tone. Pan the mics into the center which would be summing them and see if the tone changes. If it changes a lot you have phase cancelation. Move one of the mics half an inch closer to the speaker (sometimes less for fine tuning) and repeat until there is not a significant change when you sum the mics, at which point, hopefully they will be in phase.

Posted: Wed - August 25, 2004 at 12:05 PM          

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