Best guitar for Direct Input Recording?

[aaronglass]

Hey! the question is as the title says haha.

I have an ibanez art 100 that quite frankly is really muddy when recorded, no matter what tone I use or what setup I use for the DI. I've had professional engineers try to mix with it, and they say the signal is just too muddy to get any real solid crunch out of for metal/hardcore.

The ibanez is going into a Saffire pro 40, so I know it's not the interfaces problem being that that model is generally accepted.

So that being said, any preferences regarding direct input recording for guitars?

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

It doesn't matter whether it's DI recording or real amps - a good sounding guitar is a good sounding guitar. Personally, I prefer well-made mahogany guitars with set necks and an EMG 81 in the bridge for the usual metal tones, as do a lot of people, but seriously, there are fuck-tons of good axes out there so your question is a bit vague.

 

[Skinny Viking]

possible contributing factors in addition to just the guitar:

string choice / newness / gauge
pickups
shitty playing / technique

 

[Adrian Warren]

I had a look at the specs and the guitar seems to be perfectly fine for recording. You could try switching your guitar pickups as they might be the source of the muddiness. There are plenty of choices for both passive and active pickups. Some of the most popular pickups are EMG, Seymour Duncan and Bareknuckle. Otherwise be sure to record with new strings and quality cables and you should be perfectly fine.

 

[RedDog]

Replace your pots if all else fails. Fifty percent of my shit sounding guitars was in the electronics, then the wood itself. You won't catch me djenting licks on an es335.

 

[BLUElightCory]

It doesn't matter whether it's DI recording or real amps - a good sounding guitar is a good sounding guitar.

Sage wisdom here.

 

[JakeAC5253]

It doesn't sound like you are using a DI box. I have had to turn down reamping jobs because the DI was crappy quality. I can usually tell that a DI was recorded without a DI box even before I ask the artist. It is in most cases not a good thing to record a DI without a DI box if you desire professional results.

 

[Shinozoku]

check out the "How to prepare your tracks for reamping" sticky on the forums here, and consider this:

How close are your pickups to the strings? You might need to back them off.
Change electronics.
Change pickups.

And everything else people have mentioned here.

 

[Mutant]

And post a DI (unprocessed) clip so we can hear it with our own ears.