Crap guitar sound when recording - help please
Discussion
I am recording on a Tascam 8 track but I have not been able to get a decent guitar sound. It sounds OKish in the room but on playback it sounds crap.
Gear is a 76 Gibson Explorer through a ROSS 10 practice amplifier. I used to have a Marshall but got rid when I stopped gigging. Obvious answer is the amp but is that all there is to it?
I am aiming for a sound best heard on David Bowie's Cat People (Putting Out Fire)- not the SRV version on the Let's Dance album but the Moroder original). I use a BOSS overdrive and have the amp slightly overdriven as well but the sound is too distorted rather than crunched if you know what I mean. I record at a reasonably high volume as I always understood that amps work best when they are at high volume and with a good quality microphone about 12 inches in front of the speaker. I usually use the bridge pick-up for everything adding a bit more of the overdrive pedal for lead. Tone control all the way up to the treble end.
I was thinking about turning the overdrive down and buying a BOSS digital delay?
Any ideas anyone and to what extent will things be improved by changing the ancient strings.....?
Or is it just the amp?
L.F.
Gear is a 76 Gibson Explorer through a ROSS 10 practice amplifier. I used to have a Marshall but got rid when I stopped gigging. Obvious answer is the amp but is that all there is to it?
I am aiming for a sound best heard on David Bowie's Cat People (Putting Out Fire)- not the SRV version on the Let's Dance album but the Moroder original). I use a BOSS overdrive and have the amp slightly overdriven as well but the sound is too distorted rather than crunched if you know what I mean. I record at a reasonably high volume as I always understood that amps work best when they are at high volume and with a good quality microphone about 12 inches in front of the speaker. I usually use the bridge pick-up for everything adding a bit more of the overdrive pedal for lead. Tone control all the way up to the treble end.
I was thinking about turning the overdrive down and buying a BOSS digital delay?
Any ideas anyone and to what extent will things be improved by changing the ancient strings.....?
Or is it just the amp?
L.F.
Edited by lockhart flawse on Tuesday 22 June 12:15
I'm not an expert, but would suggest the following:
1) Have your guitar set up properly (new strings, cleaned, action, intonation, etc will make a huge difference).
2) Amp: is this a 10-watt practice amp? If so, it's going to be pretty cheaply made and will have a small 8" or 10" speaker. If you are able to buy, hire or borrow a better amp I would do this. A 1x12" combo would prob. suit your needs perfectly (doesn't have to be a Marshall!). Valve amps can change sound considerably when you wind them up, I don't think this is the case with solid-state (transistor) amps.
3) Microphone: Have you experimented with different mic positions? When I was a kid I had a little Roland 10-watt practice amp which was so tinny that I sellotaped a few pages of a newspaper to the front to filter out some of the treble - it had a dramatic effect! Is the mic directly in front of the centre of the speaker cone? Why not try moving it a little way from the centre? Probably a lot of trial and error here.
4) Delay: Have you got any reverb? My amp has reverb built in, and I don't think I've moved the dial from '10' for about 10 years!
5) Overdrive: Have you tried turning the volume/tone down on your guitar? It might smooth your sound back towards a nice ryhthm crunch - and you can turn the guitar volume up for lead lines without adjusting the overdrive pedal. I confess I've never recorded anything for myself - and I'm most certainly not an expert, but I always found with overdrive pedals that I was over-egging the amount of gain and treble I used to the point that when I did record myself the sound was very fizzy and lacked any substance (I did use a lot of distortion though!)
6) Bass: have you got a bass track to record too? Bass will add a lot of depth to your rhythm parts and can also add crunch or warmth or whatever depending on the bass tone.
HTH
1) Have your guitar set up properly (new strings, cleaned, action, intonation, etc will make a huge difference).
2) Amp: is this a 10-watt practice amp? If so, it's going to be pretty cheaply made and will have a small 8" or 10" speaker. If you are able to buy, hire or borrow a better amp I would do this. A 1x12" combo would prob. suit your needs perfectly (doesn't have to be a Marshall!). Valve amps can change sound considerably when you wind them up, I don't think this is the case with solid-state (transistor) amps.
3) Microphone: Have you experimented with different mic positions? When I was a kid I had a little Roland 10-watt practice amp which was so tinny that I sellotaped a few pages of a newspaper to the front to filter out some of the treble - it had a dramatic effect! Is the mic directly in front of the centre of the speaker cone? Why not try moving it a little way from the centre? Probably a lot of trial and error here.
4) Delay: Have you got any reverb? My amp has reverb built in, and I don't think I've moved the dial from '10' for about 10 years!
5) Overdrive: Have you tried turning the volume/tone down on your guitar? It might smooth your sound back towards a nice ryhthm crunch - and you can turn the guitar volume up for lead lines without adjusting the overdrive pedal. I confess I've never recorded anything for myself - and I'm most certainly not an expert, but I always found with overdrive pedals that I was over-egging the amount of gain and treble I used to the point that when I did record myself the sound was very fizzy and lacked any substance (I did use a lot of distortion though!)
6) Bass: have you got a bass track to record too? Bass will add a lot of depth to your rhythm parts and can also add crunch or warmth or whatever depending on the bass tone.
HTH
First thing to do is ditch the pedal. You only need pedals in a live environment so far as overdrive is concerned for the vast majority of amps, as all it does is replicate the noise of an amp at full power.
Turn every knob on the amplifier to full (including the EQ, which will be passive so anything less than full will hurt the signal). If this gives too much distortion then turn down the gain but leave everything else at maximum. This will be "too loud" but that isn't too much of a problem unless you live in a flat.
set up your microphone a maximum of 1cm away from the amplifier, slightly off centre (and at about a 10 degree angle) from the middle of the speaker cone. Check the level on the 8 track and reduce it on the 8 track to a point where it won't "clip" at the loudest thing you play. That should do it.
-edit-
The trick is to get the highest signal to noise ratio (done by turning the amp up loud) as well as getting the best tone (again, done by turning the amp up loud)
Turn every knob on the amplifier to full (including the EQ, which will be passive so anything less than full will hurt the signal). If this gives too much distortion then turn down the gain but leave everything else at maximum. This will be "too loud" but that isn't too much of a problem unless you live in a flat.
set up your microphone a maximum of 1cm away from the amplifier, slightly off centre (and at about a 10 degree angle) from the middle of the speaker cone. Check the level on the 8 track and reduce it on the 8 track to a point where it won't "clip" at the loudest thing you play. That should do it.
-edit-
The trick is to get the highest signal to noise ratio (done by turning the amp up loud) as well as getting the best tone (again, done by turning the amp up loud)
Edited by davepoth on Tuesday 22 June 19:17
Each speaker has a sweet spot (if you look at a lot of cabs when they're in the studio they'll often have a little bit of tape showing the spot. You should never direct the mike towards the centre of the cone but at an angle so that it is at 90 degrees to the main part of the cone - try going half way between the centre and edge - this helps clean stuff up.
Also, make sure it is up close as you don't want to have any ambiant reverb from your room either.
Another strategy is to double track the guitar with a second cleaner sound - you can still have the crunch from the overdriven track but the musicality of the clean and mix them together. Whern recortding, I used to run a Marshall head & 4x12 for the dirty stuff and a Matchless DC30 combo (stunning bit of kit) for the cleans and then mix togther. I didn't double track but split the signal to both at the same time.
And yes, as said - a little practice amp is never going to have the depth and sound like a top rig - you might get close if you have a Blackstar HT-5 or a Marshall Class 5.
Also, make sure it is up close as you don't want to have any ambiant reverb from your room either.
Another strategy is to double track the guitar with a second cleaner sound - you can still have the crunch from the overdriven track but the musicality of the clean and mix them together. Whern recortding, I used to run a Marshall head & 4x12 for the dirty stuff and a Matchless DC30 combo (stunning bit of kit) for the cleans and then mix togther. I didn't double track but split the signal to both at the same time.
And yes, as said - a little practice amp is never going to have the depth and sound like a top rig - you might get close if you have a Blackstar HT-5 or a Marshall Class 5.
Edited by Asterix on Wednesday 23 June 19:26
Edited by Asterix on Wednesday 23 June 19:36
Asterix said:
And yes, as said - a little practice amp is never going to have the depth and sound like a top rig - you might get close if you have a Blackstar HT-5 or a Marshall Class 5.
Although I've seen some very silly people running nice amps completely clean and then using a £50 distortion pedal to get their driven sound. Amp drive is almost always better than pedal drive.davepoth said:
Asterix said:
And yes, as said - a little practice amp is never going to have the depth and sound like a top rig - you might get close if you have a Blackstar HT-5 or a Marshall Class 5.
Although I've seen some very silly people running nice amps completely clean and then using a £50 distortion pedal to get their driven sound. Amp drive is almost always better than pedal drive.It really depends on the sound you're after (and I'm not familiar with the records you mention)
I wouldn't say pedals are not as good as amp drive, they're just different. Dave Gilmour's tone (of Pink Floyd) is one of the most desirable tones ever created, and it's mainly pedal gain.
That said, I do prefer the tone of a 335 through an Orange amp to just about anything, particularly when it starts to feed back. Mmmmm
The above are all good things to try, but the one tip I would give you above all others if you're trying to recreate in a recording the sound you hear in the room is to record in stereo. You'll get far better depth to the recording and the phase relationship between the two mics will make it seem BIGGER. A great technique I use a lot is to have one mic close to the amp (about 1-2 inches away from the edge of the cone pointing inwards -move it around till it sounds good) and a 2nd mic (the nicer of the two mics) about 2-3 feet away. When mixing, pan the closer mic to the place in the stereo field you want it to sound like it's coming from and pan the other mic the same amount in the other direction.
Also, some of the biggest records in the world were recorded on very modest equipment. So don't worry too much about your gear until you've got the best from what you've got. Fresh strings are the first step, they will make your guitar sound much brighter and give you more control over the tone -it's easier to get rid of tone than to add it artificially.
Trust my advice, I've worked on about 30 UK top 10 singles. /modest
I wouldn't say pedals are not as good as amp drive, they're just different. Dave Gilmour's tone (of Pink Floyd) is one of the most desirable tones ever created, and it's mainly pedal gain.
That said, I do prefer the tone of a 335 through an Orange amp to just about anything, particularly when it starts to feed back. Mmmmm
The above are all good things to try, but the one tip I would give you above all others if you're trying to recreate in a recording the sound you hear in the room is to record in stereo. You'll get far better depth to the recording and the phase relationship between the two mics will make it seem BIGGER. A great technique I use a lot is to have one mic close to the amp (about 1-2 inches away from the edge of the cone pointing inwards -move it around till it sounds good) and a 2nd mic (the nicer of the two mics) about 2-3 feet away. When mixing, pan the closer mic to the place in the stereo field you want it to sound like it's coming from and pan the other mic the same amount in the other direction.
Also, some of the biggest records in the world were recorded on very modest equipment. So don't worry too much about your gear until you've got the best from what you've got. Fresh strings are the first step, they will make your guitar sound much brighter and give you more control over the tone -it's easier to get rid of tone than to add it artificially.
Trust my advice, I've worked on about 30 UK top 10 singles. /modest
All very true stuff. It's quite fun to experiment with the second mic - I've had some luck sticking one into the back of the amplifier, but it's often down to what sounds "right". There are no real right or wrong answers, so like everything the trick is to muck around and eventually it'll come good.
I haven't been involved in any hit UK singles.
I haven't been involved in any hit UK singles.
This is all great stuff and really useful - thanks. I have always been far more interested in the musical side rather than the technical side and I am beginning to realise that my normal set up was probably geared more to the pedal board rather than the amp.
So last night I started experimenting as per the suggestions - I turned everything on the amp up to 11 (I always have the guitar all the way up), switched off the overdrive pedal and started to play around with the mike. The rhythm recorded sound is better but the tone of the lower frequencies is still crap. I think new strings will help that a lot so that's next on the list.
I plan to post the results in due course but it has taken a long time to get the recording set up right.
Another question - my keyboard has gone out of tune and I have just had to swap it over for an old one I had in storage. Is it fixable? It's just a Yamaha something or other.
L.F.
So last night I started experimenting as per the suggestions - I turned everything on the amp up to 11 (I always have the guitar all the way up), switched off the overdrive pedal and started to play around with the mike. The rhythm recorded sound is better but the tone of the lower frequencies is still crap. I think new strings will help that a lot so that's next on the list.
I plan to post the results in due course but it has taken a long time to get the recording set up right.
Another question - my keyboard has gone out of tune and I have just had to swap it over for an old one I had in storage. Is it fixable? It's just a Yamaha something or other.
L.F.
lockhart flawse said:
This is all great stuff and really useful - thanks. I have always been far more interested in the musical side rather than the technical side and I am beginning to realise that my normal set up was probably geared more to the pedal board rather than the amp.
So last night I started experimenting as per the suggestions - I turned everything on the amp up to 11 (I always have the guitar all the way up), switched off the overdrive pedal and started to play around with the mike. The rhythm recorded sound is better but the tone of the lower frequencies is still crap. I think new strings will help that a lot so that's next on the list.
I plan to post the results in due course but it has taken a long time to get the recording set up right.
Another question - my keyboard has gone out of tune and I have just had to swap it over for an old one I had in storage. Is it fixable? It's just a Yamaha something or other.
L.F.
Most keyboards will have a tuning thing somewhere - often underneath or on the back so it can't be easily moved - it will only be small, probably less than 5mm across and you use a thin screwdriver to adjust.So last night I started experimenting as per the suggestions - I turned everything on the amp up to 11 (I always have the guitar all the way up), switched off the overdrive pedal and started to play around with the mike. The rhythm recorded sound is better but the tone of the lower frequencies is still crap. I think new strings will help that a lot so that's next on the list.
I plan to post the results in due course but it has taken a long time to get the recording set up right.
Another question - my keyboard has gone out of tune and I have just had to swap it over for an old one I had in storage. Is it fixable? It's just a Yamaha something or other.
L.F.
Gassing Station | Music | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff