Recent content by mharwood

This is what I did, and I'd agree that its by far the best option if you can find a decent used guitar with the pickups you want. In my case, I found a very well-treated used ESP LTD 400 series with a nice set of SD's it it. Still have my original guitar with the EMGs (81/60 in my case), and...

I like TSE B.O.D., but most of the time I honestly find myself going with their guitar amp sims instead. After splitting the bass into two bands, there's not much low end on the distorted track anyway, so the guitar VST's usually handle the job very well. B.O.D is my go to when I'm just jamming...

Love my Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, and if you wanna save some $$$ the Pro 24 and Pro 24 DSP have most of the same features with fewer inputs. I got my Pro 40 for under $400 new, and the other models generally go for less than that.

I use a free program called TX16wx, and it works great. The free version can do multi-velocity and random triggering just fine, but the pay version (< $50 for a non-commercial license) does have some options that make this a little less cumbersome if you do it a lot. Either way, I'd highly...

I play ampsims in Reaper all the time through my Pro40. Latency time is on the order of a few ms (< 20, i.e. short enough to make no difference whatsoever). I also have EMG 81's and play them directly into the Pro40's instrument inputs with no issues (the Pro40 does have a pad switch to reduce...

Yep, any PCI card with the TI chipset should work fine. Performance should be just as good or better than a FW input built right into your motherboard. +1 on the MixControl software. Wasn't really a selling point for me when I bought my Pro40, but now that I have it I'm amazed at how often I...

I'm a big fan of my Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, and I believe the Saffire Pro 24, Saffire Pro 24 DSP, and Saffire Pro 14 are essentially the same as the 40, just with fewer inputs/outputs. All can be had for under $400 easily. The Pro 24 DSP definitely has MIDI and two HP outs; not sure about the...

As others have said, there's a few ways to do this, but volume envelope automation would be the easiest and most preferred way. Take some time to read over the envelopes/automation sections of the Reaper manual; if you continue mixing long term you'll make very frequent use of these options for...

There's a JS plugin in REAPER called "vlolume/pan" which works in 0.1 dB increments. Alternatively, it's really easy to open up the JS plugin editor and edit the JS:volume plugin to work in 0.1 dB increments. I've been using the JS:volume/pan plugin and have been happy with the results. The...

Thanks for the video! Aside from learning/practicing guitar EQ, the thing that has helped me the most is just having a simple MIDI control surface. I'm pretty comfortable using the mouse for almost everything else, but successfully EQ-ing anything even moderately tricky seems to be a major PITA...

Use it a lot for the standard guitar duck when the lead vox are running. Other than that, I haven't gotten into it much, but I really like the reverb vocal tail idea. Need to try that sometime.

How many different impulses have you tried with your cab sim? There are boatloads of free and not free ones out there, and they all sound different. Out of the hundreds of impulses I have in my collection, maybe only a handful peak my interest for a given sound that I'm looking for.

+3 I've tried close miking the hat and ride a few times. I never end up using the mics in the mix.

Sounds really good! Big fan of the way you have the guitars working in there. I like the way the kick sounds as well, though I can't really comment on the low end too much because I'm sitting at work with crappy headphones. The only thing that sounded a little weird to me were the cymbals. I...

+1. In addition to proper gain staging, having a clear vision of why you want/need to use a plugin what you hope to accomplish with it will help you make a better evaluation of whether or not the plugin is doing what you want it to do. With that in mind, get in the habit of spending a...