The definitive Studio Checklist

[James Murphy]

no, the issue about not using floating trem guitars for rhythm tracking is not that they make some extra noise... that's easily dampened. the issue is that heavily struck chords can go out of tune. a secondary issue is that the missing wood that's cut out to make room for the trem assembly can lead to a thinner sound.

i pretty much insist on this one as well, and when the artist does not own a suitable guitar, i provide one of mine.

 

[Nebulous]

Not to mention a studio first timer who puts too much pressure on the bridge when palm muting. No amount of tuning will fix that shit.

 

[Soundlurker]

IMO, sticking too much dampening into the cavities of the guitar can make it sound dull.

 

[James Murphy]

^ only if you rely on the trem assembly for the brightness in your tone.... it's really easy to just not record rhythms with a trem guitar though.

 

[James Murphy]

Not to mention a studio first timer who puts too much pressure on the bridge when palm muting. No amount of tuning will fix that shit.

yeah, that's a big issue as well.

 

[Soundlurker]

^ only if you rely on the trem assembly for the brightness in your tone.... it's really easy to just not record rhythms with a trem guitar though.

The way I see it, if the cavities are really stuffed, you are restraining the natural vibrations of the wood, at least to some extent. Also, I'm not refereing to the trem assembly only, but the cavity for the pots, as well. Some guitars seem to have quite big cavities and tend to resonate too much. My brief tests revealed that, not surprisingly, a moderate amount of dampening makes the guitar sound best.

 

[Metaltastic]

Meh, since we tune only half step down and all of our gutiars are the exact same minus shape (V's, RRs, Kellys) and pickups

And lets just say our rhythms are very alexi/roope inspired? You know, never really rhythm, sometimes lead, squeel, dive, repeat.

Feels good man.

Then fuck it, stick with it and rock out, I'm sure tons of awesome tones have been recorded with Floyd bridges! (e.g. "Are You Dead Yet?" )

 

[James Murphy]

@Shadow_Walker....i never advocated anything more than a moderate amount of dampening in that cavity... so not sure where you got that. i dont' put anything... ever.. into the electronics cavity either.. never even heard of anyone doing that.... but give me a stop-tailpiece guitar with tune-o-matic style bridge for rhythm guitar tracking every time, over any trem-equipped guitar regardless of how it's blocked or dampened, hands down. you can hear the difference between guitars of otherwise equivalent quality/specs when one has a big block of wood missing from the center of the body as compared to one that doesn't... and everything else being equal, i've rarely, if ever, heard a trem-equipped guitar to come out on top in such a comparison.

 

[Soundlurker]

And I never said you are giving such an advice. I was merely sharing an observation I've made regarding guitar dampening in general.
In case Dandelium or anyone else, for example, has stuffed it with too much dampening material.

When I filled it's internal cavities () with cotton and placed EMG pickups foam under the strings in the headstock (before locking nut), it stopped doing ANY noise

 

[fade_2_black]

Very good stuff. I have a similar checklist to this (a little shorter and not so in-depth), but you wouldnt believe how frequently musicians ignore the entire thing.

 

[Erik Monsonis]

I've never noticed any difference in sound by using foam to isolate the electronics cavity from the outside and from the battery allocated in there. It just avoids noises coming from the battery's movement and protects circuits. I may be wrong, but I've never noticed a difference.

Also, the springs work exactly as good as before, and as long as I use good new strings to record, I don't think I'm losing brightness on the tone...

About the big wood block lacking, well, I agree with James, it HAS to be noticed, as it's a HUGE block what's missing there, and its exactly where you'd like wood to be there to resonate with the strings.

 

[DanLights]

That part in the list about mixing, I'm almost sure I saw that same text on the webpage of Studio Fredman?

 

[Fox Mulder]

Not to mention a studio first timer who puts too much pressure on the bridge when palm muting. No amount of tuning will fix that shit.

Woohoo! I come across those a lot. To my horror, some players never even realize that their distuned.