I know I started a thread similar to this some time ago (here), but I feel like I've really honed and perfected my treatise on the subject in another argument on the Boogie Board (continuing from this thread) that is sure to raise some hackles. But fuck it, I stand by it! Here we go...
Pretty proud of that I must say; I labored for quite awhile to phrase it as clearly AND tactfully as I could; one thing I've learned is that people aren't gonna respond to your suggestions (no matter how valid they are) if you're a cock about them!
Here's the thread on that forum this little speech is from, btw (another good read for those who wanna get some serious facepalm-ing in)
l feel that playing a rig live and in the room smears over WAY more details than recording it, because close-mic'ing that sucker in a studio environment puts it under the ultimate microscope, and drags all the worst aspects into the light, where they can't be obscured by such factors as huge volume, low-end thunk (it can be intoxicating, I can't deny), reflections EVERYWHERE, and of course, the thrill of wielding such power. Thus, I feel you can "get away" with a lot more with a room tone, but I also feel that any tonal change made for the benefit of a recording (especially about fitting in the overall mix) will almost always also be the best (or close to it) for live tones. Not to mention the extreme potential for placebo effect (which is present in recording too, of course, but at least one can get many other opinions to confirm/deny it by submitting clips in a blind test and gauging the results).
And that of course assumes that the guitarist has any idea what good tone is in the first place; I doubt I'm alone in having experienced countless shows where the guitarist is running a Metal Zone into the clean channel of his Rectifier (that sounds like balls), cranking up a Sonic Maximizer in the loop (that sounds like balls), or just tweaking the amp to sound more like balls then ever thought possible. And since they barely know anything about concepts of mixing, it's kinda hard to blame them! And the horror stories I have heard from recording engineers who deal with guitarists that come in with "their own tone", and being absolutely dumbfounded by how awful it sounds; as I said, there are plenty of guitarists who do have some idea what they're doing, and then plenty that do not! And to be clear, I still consider myself a guitarist first, recording engineer second, but the latter has definitely had a huge influence (for the better IMO) on my philosophies as the former!
However, to finish the thought, since as I said I feel you can get away with a lot more in a live environment, feel free to make some unorthodox choices in your gear/settings in the hopes of defining "your own tone", and maybe they'll even work well enough in the room - just try not to take it too hard if you go in for a recording and the engineer politely but firmly insists on taking DI's for re-amping
Pretty proud of that I must say; I labored for quite awhile to phrase it as clearly AND tactfully as I could; one thing I've learned is that people aren't gonna respond to your suggestions (no matter how valid they are) if you're a cock about them!
Here's the thread on that forum this little speech is from, btw (another good read for those who wanna get some serious facepalm-ing in
)
(I labored to make that sound as little like "giving the Marcus seal of approval" as possible, hope it worked 
