Ways to make digitally recorded guitars more analog, with digital tools?

[Erkan]

the demo's free, bro...you can't save presets and it hisses every 30 seconds, but at least that's something

And you can export the guitar tracks twice and copy/paste between the two whenever the hissing occurs, because the hiss almost never occurs on the same spot on both tracks... you know what I'm saying? (GubbKuK taught me this back when I was like "What are impulses, how do you use them? What is Revalver?")

 

[Erkan]

Dang I'd like to get my hands on that Revalver shit. I'm broke as a joke though, so I'm stuck with what I have for now. Plus I'd love to save up for a real 6505, but damn bills keep getting in the way. Argghh!

Since you're processing your DI track "In The Box", I kinda doubt your converters or preamp are much of your problem. I would think that all of the processing that revalver is doing would at least mask most artifacts inherited by crappy pres/converters. Most of the "digitalness" you're hearing is probably a result from revalver's processing. I'm sure better quality pres/converters would yield somewhat of an improvement, but I'm thinking your disatisfaction is more likely due to the tone you're getting from the modeler itself. I'd say keep on tweaking, and perhaps over time you'll end up surprising yourself by stumbling upon a tone you like, or at are satifisfied with until you can get your hands on an amp.

Like others have mentioned, if you can get your hands on a decent amp and an sm-57 for a day you can experiment with that and see if you can get something more satisfying. If so, you know what you need to. Either get an amp or try to settle for the best tone you can achieve with your modeler. I would venture to think that your preamp and converters are just fine for recording the way you are, and better converters wouldn't yield much of an improvement. The amp modeler is most likely your weakest link, not the pres/converters. I think the pres/converters would play a much bigger role when you start mic'ing a real amp, as the signal won't be going through as drastic of a change in the box, and the "imprint" inherited from the pres/converters will remain much more intact. Just my uneducated opinion.

Hmm good thinking... yea I guess the actual amp-sim is the biggest problem. I'll just need to tweak and tweak and experiment and try more things ... and tweak more then.

I have done test recordings with a bunch of amps 'n cabs this summer, like a Mesa Dual Rectifier with Marshall 1960 4x10 cab, Peavey 5150 (the very first edition) with some Laney 4x10 cab, Peavey JSX with some Peavey 4x10 and a Marshall JCM 800 with a Marshall 1960 4x10 cab. Of all those amps, the Mesa was probably more like the tone I'm after, with a mooshie smooshie high-end, while all the others had so harsh high-end, heck they sounded like amp-sims in the high register.

But then again, I've heard recordings with f.ex 5150 (who hasn't) that has had a really nice and warm and tight high, the way I like it.



Today I experimented with splitting up the guitar signal and transferring the highs to a separate track and processing them with anything that came into mind... I tried compressing, EQing, even tried putting reverb on the highs haha. Also tried saturating them (even more) etc but no, it didn't smoosh them up.

By the way, when I say smooshy highs, a good reference is the intro on Shitstorm by Strapping Young Lad. You can hear the guitars and the hihat going for the first few bars, and I really like the highs on those guitars, they're "smooshy", according to me.

 

[Uladyne]

the demo's free, bro...you can't save presets and it hisses every 30 seconds, but at least that's something

 

[Uladyne]

By the way, when I say smooshy highs, a good reference is the intro on Shitstorm by Strapping Young Lad. You can hear the guitars and the hihat going for the first few bars, and I really like the highs on those guitars, they're "smooshy", according to me.

Oh yea I like that tone. I think that may be kind of a mesa thing. I know thats what SYL use. Marshalls kind of have a certain amount of "flex" to them, and I remember my old Peavey XXX had some squishiness, but mesas definitely seem to have their own distinct dry smooshiness that is super tasty. I'm thinking it's probably an artifact from the power stage or something, so I doubt a modeler will really give you that, unfortunately. Damn all this talk has me fiending for a nice toob amp now. I miss the smell of warm tubes.

 

[Metaltastic]

Hahahahaha, smooshiness for the win!

 

[Proggm]

try Genwave EQ plugin

That’s a joke, right? I don’t understand how an entirely inaccurate (look over KVR forums for graphical tests), hugely overpriced and overhyped plugin with a horrible and unintuitive GUI can be recommended by anyone.

 

[Exocaster]

Running a pod through a nice tube comp or hitting something like a 1176 hard without compression (much..) wors wonders for pod tones aswell.

I can't say I've done either, but I did track a Pod to analog tape once and it sounded pretty awesome.

 

[colonel kurtz]

That’s a joke, right? I don’t understand how an entirely inaccurate (look over KVR forums for graphical tests), hugely overpriced and overhyped plugin with a horrible and unintuitive GUI can be recommended by anyone.

even if it's a good EQ plug, it's not going to magically make a modeled guitar tone sound like a raging speaker cab

 

[Erkan]

even if it's a good EQ plug, it's not going to magically make a modeled guitar tone sound like a raging speaker cab

I doubt it'll do that too :| It drains a lot of CPU power as well since it processes at 384 khz or something... crazy.




Today, I was toying around quite a bit with saturating my clean guitar signal before it hit an amp-sim, by using 2 Tessla SE and a Magneto... AND a TSS (as always) right at the start, and dominion with settings that make the picking jump up in volume, while leaving the rest alone. It's hard when I listen under shitty conditions but I'll make a test mix with guitars and programmed drums to see if it's any useful. I really like the Tessla SE... can't believe it's freeware.

Anyhow, some cab impulses help those smooshy smooshy highs that I'm looking for but yeah, if Devin uses a few thousand dollars worth of gear to get that, I shouldn't aim too high with amp-sims.

I think I would seriously cream my pants if I managed to get a Shitstorm (or Alien) type of smooshy guitar tone inside the box. And I'm really beginning to like this word smooshy! Smooshy smooshy smooshy... smooshy to the left, smooshy to the right.

 

[jrt12]

No, not at all - I've heard amazing sounds recorded with crap preamps and converters; it may sound "flat" and "cold" directly compared to something recorded with Neves and Lavry's, but as long as the source material is good, you're using a decent mic, and the position is set, all better preamps and converters are gonna do is just enhance something that's already good. Better interface stuff (as I'll henceforth be calling it) can't make a bad tone good, and most of the time bad interface stuff can't make a good tone bad (unless it's like a super noisy preamp)

thanks so much for the input! its also reassuring to know that i'm not doomed before i begin because of lack of proper equipment. while i've done some basic recording in the past, it was always to just get the song ideas down. now that i'm trying to move forward (albeit slowly), i'm doing my best to figure out what pieces are critical and worth spending money on and which ones you can trade down on. I dont expect to have tracks that sound like the pro's, cuz there's no way i'll be affording half this equipment. and if i tried mic'ing a cab in my apartment, i'm sure i'd be homeless shortly thereafter. however, there's so much great info here, i'm really hoping to be able to put something palatable enough together. like the minor leagues vs the pro's.

just one more quick question? whats mixing "in the box"? i've seen that said several times here, and not sure what that means.

 

[Metaltastic]

No problem dude! Mixing "in the box" (or ITB) means only using plugins to do your mixing, never sending the signal out to an external hardware compressor/eq/reverb/whatever

 

[jrt12]

ah... ok. i remember seeing a musiciansfriend ad or something like that selling "awesome in a box". sounded weird/lame to me, i just skipped over it. maybe it was the magic bullet i was looking for... yea right.

 

[Erkan]

Mixing in the box is goddamn convenient though... for small places and low budgets, you can still do ok stuff

It's nice to be able to record and produce your own demo-tapes etc so you don't need to go pay some half-assed cheap studio to do it. It's nice to know about mixing etc, helps your economy and also helps you later when you record something in a real studio... so you know what the heck is going on and what's expected of you etc.


Whooo, gotta get up in 6-7 hours and go tweak some more guitar sounds...

 

[jrt12]

forgive my noob-ness, and try not to laugh if its a stupid question... but i've just learned i'm mixing "in the box." so would sending a track off to be mastered by one of these song mills (tune-core or disc makers), would that help bring some richness or warm analog goodness to a track?

also, are these places like the 2 i mentioned, are they just a plug and chug song factories where they put their appropriate preset (rock, pop, rnb) on a track and just send it back? i've heard thats what alot of the people on craigslist do. you know, the ones on craigslist who post everyday and offer mastering for $50 per track. i hear some of then just throw a L1 maximizer or something on it and send it back. while it makes the track "slam", its not true mastering. of course, this is all hearsay... i really dont know.

 

[siegfried]

That’s a joke, right? I don’t understand how an entirely inaccurate (look over KVR forums for graphical tests), hugely overpriced and overhyped plugin with a horrible and unintuitive GUI can be recommended by anyone.

Well, I wasn´t joking You are right, almost everything about this plugin is horrible (for example GUI, oh my god WTF), but I was excited about its sound on distorted guitars, thats all

 

[colonel kurtz]

forgive my noob-ness, and try not to laugh if its a stupid question... but i've just learned i'm mixing "in the box." so would sending a track off to be mastered by one of these song mills (tune-core or disc makers), would that help bring some richness or warm analog goodness to a track?

also, are these places like the 2 i mentioned, are they just a plug and chug song factories where they put their appropriate preset (rock, pop, rnb) on a track and just send it back? i've heard thats what alot of the people on craigslist do. you know, the ones on craigslist who post everyday and offer mastering for $50 per track. i hear some of then just throw a L1 maximizer or something on it and send it back. while it makes the track "slam", its not true mastering. of course, this is all hearsay... i really dont know.

that "warm analog goodness" won't be introduced to your recordings by those shitty "mastering" places...and probably not by a qualified and talented ME, either.

that particular "sound" is really the result of having your tracks recorded to tape, then mixed on an analog console with good outboard gear. this is not to say that you can't get a good mix digitally, but throwing some master buss processing on there isn't going to magically transform a mix into something that it wasn't in the 1st place.

 

[Uladyne]

Today, I was toying around quite a bit with saturating my clean guitar signal before it hit an amp-sim, by using 2 Tessla SE and a Magneto... AND a TSS (as always) right at the start, and dominion with settings that make the picking jump up in volume, while leaving the rest alone. It's hard when I listen under shitty conditions but I'll make a test mix with guitars and programmed drums to see if it's any useful. I really like the Tessla SE... can't believe it's freeware.

Woa I like the idea of putting dominion on the DI track to strengthen the picking attack. I once recorded a band with a guitar player who had the weakest picking hand imaginable. Almost like he was afraid of breaking the strings or something. I pretty much had to turn off the noise gate because some of his notes would barely make it through. Yea, I'm serious. I wonder if dominion could've helped in that situation. Great idea man!

 

[Erkan]

Woa I like the idea of putting dominion on the DI track to strengthen the picking attack. I once recorded a band with a guitar player who had the weakest picking hand imaginable. Almost like he was afraid of breaking the strings or something. I pretty much had to turn off the noise gate because some of his notes would barely make it through. Yea, I'm serious. I wonder if dominion could've helped in that situation. Great idea man!

Haha, gotta love people who play like that. I may not play as hard as.... a really hard playing guy, but I do make it through the noise gate haha (I think I do play harder than the real guitarist in my band, I'm just a drummer but maybe that's why I play harder than him...)

Anyway, well I just thought "Fuck it, I'm gonna try Dominion", so I slammed it on right after the noise gate. So right now I have Gate -> Dominion (almost max attack and short time, think I boosted the sustain just slightly as well) -> TSS with the usual max tone settings -> Magneto (cranked almost to max) -> EQ (takes away a some sub-bass, and boosts some mids for the amp-sim) -> Revalver with Flathill amp and GH's New_IR_1.wav impulse (hope I'm correct about the name).

It did get me closer to my goal with smooshy high-end but it's FAAAAR from Devin's smooshiness, understandably, but I think the Magneto really helps, before the amp Also, I think I like Flathill more than 6505, atleast for this sound.

Tomorrow, I'll try to quad track some riff or two and post it.

If anyone else has some weird tips to do on the guitar tracks, like putting Dominion to shape the picks of the guitar before it hits the amp, please do share! Looking for new ways or new inspiration for guitar sounds... (crossing fingers for tomorrow's little tracking test).

(This didn't turn into a meaningless thread after all, I've seen some good talk in here, weeeeee )

 

[TheWinterSnow]

if your using revalver, this is just a nice tip from my experience.

if you want a warmer sound you really need to get the post gain up on the 6505 model to at least 8, 9 if you want huge. If that still isn't enough then place a single diode preamp after the mic, and this will give you some post mic saturation before the signal is sent to your DAW. usually sounds extremely warm compared to a real digital amp.

by that point you should have enough warmth and saturation, if you don't think so then you should probably start investing into your bass guitar tone, which if done right will combine with the drums to make the thick bottom end, that's not the guitars job, the guitar fundamentals should end by 120Hz.

 

[Ermz]

Well, I wasn´t joking You are right, almost everything about this plugin is horrible (for example GUI, oh my god WTF), but I was excited about its sound on distorted guitars, thats all

I just gave it a spin and wow... really colored. I think it could be an amazingly useful tool on certain sources (it actually seems to give very analogue-style compression when you're hitting the red... or I could just be going deaf), as it totally changes the way something sits within a mix. That would be if it didn't cost absurd amounts of money.