Guitars amp (again...)

[ThomasT]

Hallo!

Glad to find a forum about metal recording...

I just recorded sucessfully the guitars of my own band in my studio.
Since I normally record demo-CDs for unknown bands I didn't care _so_ much about there guitar sound. Means I take care but I do not try to find a special sound, I assume thats their sound they want and as long it does work I simply try to catch their sound an make only slight improvements.

But, with my own band I have a special sound in mind an my guitarists, too.
We are looking for a fat, heavy but clean sound like carcass' heartwork, samael's rebellion etc. We tune down to B.

In the past and during the sessions we tried a lot of amps and FX:
- JCM900
- two Engl (Savage and ?)
- Mesa Boogie, new dual rectifier
- Boss Metal Zone
- POD Line 6 (direct and as preamp)
- Marshall Valvestate
and some strange combination like a boss overdrive OD1 into JCM 900 etc.

The winner are always the valvestate over a 4x12" Engl cabinet for rhytm guitars. And this time for the melodie parts (those are like Paradise Lost) over the POD ("high gain") as preamp into the clean channel of the valvestate.
I prefered a real microfon over the POD's simulation.
Apropos microfone, we did a shootout of the microfones as well. The winner are the SM57. But I used a C451B additionally to have an different sound for the doubled guitars.
(Guitar Gibson Heritage tuning B, E, A, D, f#, b, 0.056"-0.012" strings)

Is this normal that a low budget tranny amp and a cheap digital solution are better than any full valve amp we tried? Esspecially the Mesa sounded ugly. There are some kind of mudd in the upper mids. Where as the lower mids are clearer than those of the valvestate. We tried everything playing technique, different, plecs, different guitars. It always sounds dirty (in a negative way).

Any comments?

@andy:

How were the guitars on Kreators "violent revolution" recorded?
Which amps? Which mics?

 

[daemon097]

Hallo!

Is this normal that a low budget tranny amp and a cheap digital solution are better than any full valve amp we tried? Esspecially the Mesa sounded ugly. There are some kind of mudd in the upper mids. Where as the lower mids are clearer than those of the valvestate. We tried everything playing technique, different, plecs, different guitars. It always sounds dirty (in a negative way).

Any comments?

@andy:

How were the guitars on Kreators "violent revolution" recorded?
Which amps? Which mics?

well - it could just be personal preference. I think the PODs have some nice clean tones, and some decent distorted tones....but they don't have that warmness of a tube amp.

I'll agree that the mesa rectifier usually doesn't sound good for recording. It took forever, but I finally got it to sound decent recorded, but decided I didn't want to go down that route for my band's guitar tone...

personally, I like aspects of the 5150's...and I like aspects of a mesa's non-rectifier models...marshalls are cool too..

but again - personal preference....I think Andy posted somewhere what Carcass used for their Heartwork album.... It was like..they used 2 amps..I don't remember what the first was, but I remember one of 'em was a marshall practice amp....so, maybe that's what you're hearing in the valvestate amp!



-v

 

[kaomao]

I think Andy posted somewhere what Carcass used for their Heartwork album.... It was like..they used 2 amps..I don't remember what the first was, but I remember one of 'em was a marshall practice amp....so, maybe that's what you're hearing in the valvestate amp!
-v

What Andy said: "Talking about Carcass, you know the Heartworks gtr sound was a 5150 mixed with a 12 wt marshall practice amp!....thats straight from Mr Richardson."

Maurizio

 

[ThomasT]

well - it could just be personal preference. I think the PODs have some nice clean tones, and some decent distorted tones....but they don't have that warmness of a tube amp.

-v

This can be be. But I got the feeling that the tube-warmness did not really suit to metal. But the other way round, I do not like the "modern sansamp sound" like on newer atrocity.
And additionally: normally play live with a drumcomputer (->like samael...) but in the studio we had a session drummer. I tend to use the even the original bassdrum (but manually [*] quantized on te 16th note parts) . So all signals, except the keys, were running through microfones.

[*] sounds like a lot of work, but it isn't and it's the only way to handle the micro timing. He played very good to the click track, but there some very slight differences. A full quant. bassdrum do not sound good.

 

[daemon097]

This can be be. But I got the feeling that the tube-warmness did not really suit to metal. But the other way round, I do not like the "modern sansamp sound" like on newer atrocity.
And additionally: normally play live with a drumcomputer (->like samael...) but in the studio we had a session drummer. I tend to use the even the original bassdrum (but manually [*] quantized on te 16th note parts) . So all signals, except the keys, were running through microfones.

[*] sounds like a lot of work, but it isn't and it's the only way to handle the micro timing. He played very good to the click track, but there some very slight differences. A full quant. bassdrum do not sound good.

did not suit metal?? well - I dunno about that...that solid state tone never really appealed to me....I think Pantera is the only guitar tone that I ever dug that was solid state.

-v

 

[Andy Sneap]

trying to think who else used Valvestate, was it the haunted on one of their albums???

Carcass was mainly 5150, so dont think you are hearing too much practice amp, though its in there....just.

I just did some Arch Enemy B sides where they used a Randall L200, and is sounds really good, I'm going to try some Randall stuff out in a couple of weeks. I can't find that model on their site so Im guessing its an older model.

 

[SickBoy]

trying to think who else used Valvestate, was it the haunted on one of their albums???

Don't know about them, but what I do know is that Valvestate 100W head with a matching cab was an amp of choice for late Chuck Schuldiner, both for recording sessions and live gigs. In fact, you can clearly see it on Death's "Live in L.A." DVD on stage...

 

[Cooperman]

trying to think who else used Valvestate, was it the haunted on one of their albums???

I think I recall reading on their website that Jensen uses a valvestate and a 5150... although in the footage on their DVD from the One Kill Wonder sessions they are using 5150's from memory.

 

[Exsanguis]

Yeah The Haunted definitely used to use Valvestates. The most obvious example of a metal band using Valvestates was already mentioned, and that is Death. I read an interview with Chuck where he said that he only plays through them, live or in the studio. For about 4 days, I had my heart set on getting a valvestate so I could be just like Chuck(I was 15 at the time, gimme a break), but then I played through one(the exact model that Chuck used, I believe the 8200) and thought it sounded like complete crap. For the rest of the year I saved up, and bought a used JCM800 head and cab, and have never considered solid states again.

 

[ThomasT]

but then I played through one(the exact model that Chuck used, I believe the 8200) and thought it sounded like complete crap.

There are different models!
Some sounds like crap and a few sounds good.
The valvestate caps are always crap.

One guitarist of my other band played a valvestate and it sounded crappy, too. He plays now Engl.
The one we have sounds good. Not very good, but better as all the amps I listed above. To make this clear: I don't mean that the bad sound should hide bad guitar playing and such things. I'm looking for a hard rhytm guitar sound that doesn't become muddy when playing 16th and are fat enough for longer tones.
E.g. even a single note through the rectifier sounds muddy.
Engls are too Hi-Fi in my opinion (too much lows - but very clear lows indeed, too much crisple highs.) and I miss the typical marshall crunch[*] in the high mids.

* Another thing hard to discripe, expecially in english. There are two typical marshall sounds in te higher mids. One that makes it sound a marshall and crunchy and another thats sharp and egdy and ugly.

 

[Frank'nfurter]

Try this combinatoin:
Overdrive SD1 -> noise Gate -> JCM 800.
That's what our guitarist play and it's perfekt. For recording we use a SM 58, 1" distance, light out of speaker axis.
Perfect setup.

Franky