How to record guitars

[sarahnouche]

for Michael Wagener fans...thought this was pretty cool-

 

Recording guitars with Michael Wagener

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

Michael is a great guy and very generous with his time and knowledge. You might consider that he is using Royer R121 mics, over $1250 each. They are figure 8 mics, and they are ribbons. Michael is the king of guitar recording, as far as I am concerned. He has recorded some of the very the best when it comes to hard rock guitar. You cannot quarrel with his results. The live room in his studio as a 4x12 cab at one end, raised and positioned perfectly to get the sound that he wants to hear.

 

I don't do it quite the way that he does... but I don't have the creds that he has, either!

 

I use Shure 57s on occasion, though often something better. I put the mic at an angle similar to the cone of the speaker, and place the capsule an inch or so from the grille, just outside of the midpoint between the dome and the edge of the cone. I think that it adds a little depth, and takes away some of the unpleasant aspects of the high end.

[anderz]

It seems that everyone uses mics, and you're probably going to get high quality stuff with those expensive mics.

 

For my recording, technology is my friend. I plug my guitar into my soon-to-come multi effects pedal, plug that into my Guitar Rig Mobile I/O Input (surprisingly high quality sound for $100, although w/ my brand new pedal, I get some recording USB stuff). I bring it into Audacity, set it to record the Guitar Rig Mobile I/O input, and I'm done. Just have to record. It's pretty decent, the whole setup including the guitar is under $500.

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

"I plug my guitar into my soon-to-come multi effects pedal, plug that into my Guitar Rig Mobile I/O Input (surprisingly high quality sound for $100, although w/ my brand new pedal, I get some recording USB stuff). I bring it into Audacity, set it to record the Guitar Rig Mobile I/O input, and I'm done. Just have to record. It's pretty decent, the whole setup including the guitar is under $500."

 

Yeah, went that route in the 90s. Found myself going back to 'real' classic amps and classic guitars, and liking it better. Then some of the guys around here turned me on to the whole boutique amp trip, and there is no way that any software will satisfy that itch again.

 

I've got the DSound software, and Vandal, and a couple of other guitar softwares around here; and I still have an RP300A and an RP6, so I can go that way if I need to. But I don't need to, so I don't.

 

I also want to point out that there is a depressing sameness about a lot of the guitar sounds that I hear on record today... it is getting like it did in the 80s, when everyone was using pointy-headstock guitars and piles of cheap pedals. Finally, Slash and a couple of other guys started plugging real guitars into real amps and avoiding all that crap, and guitar came alive again.

 

Yeah, anyone can make hellishly big guitar sounds with software today, and any guitar will do... but that is the same thing that those bands said in the 80s, and as far as the guitar sounds go, you can't tell one band from another.

 

 

[J. Dan]

What are your opinions on re-amping? I'm guessing not too fond. Just seems like it gives you more options.

[GreySeraph]

haha David Royer went to my college...guy's a trip! We had tons of royer mics in our recording studio because of it.

 

@ Bill: what boutique amps do you use?

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

What are your opinions on re-amping? I'm guessing not too fond. Just seems like it gives you more options.

 

As a former studio owner, I think that it is a handy tool.

As a guitar player, "Like dude, if you don't know what you want to sound like, why are you playing?"

 

As far as 'options' go, it appears to me that we have far to many, and that is great.....nobody ever has to make a decision. They can hedge and compromise and waffle, never offend, and never be called to task for what they have done. (shrug...)

 

I had the Wall'O Amps and the big guitar collection, and the players could come in and customise what they wanted and why. If I need more than a taste of eq to make the guitar fit in to the mix properly, then I feel that something is radically wrong.

 

On the other hand, my buddy has a studio and he routinely runs any guitarist who comes in through four guitar amps plus that Vox pedal, and records DI to a seperate track as well. Do you want to spend hours and hours deciding which guitar track fits best in the song, or which part of which track fits best in which part of which song? To me, that is really stupid, and life is far too short.

 

But I come from an era when you wrote the song, you learned the song, the band played it live in front of an audience over and over again, where you got to tweak it and make it as good as it could be, THEN you took it into the studio to record it. And recording it took a couple of hours, not months or years.

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

 

@ Bill: what boutique amps do you use?

 

I'd love to have a Divided By 13, and maybe a Dr Z. But I'm not playing out much anymore, so the expense is hard to justify. I have a Reverend Goblin and a THD UniValve with the THD 2x12 cabinet, a 1965 Vox Cambridge Reverb, a 1966 Vox bass amp, a 1948 Valco/Sears Model 1300, and a Roland Cube 40 for keys.