Recording - September 2010 - 6

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What goes home with you? As a 40-year user of recording studios my basic question is this: When I’m recording a project, what should the copy that I’m being sent home with after that particular session sound like? Meaning, how much effort do you think an engineer should put into that temporary copy? I know it’s not going to be mixed, but should it be balanced? Should it be something that I can work with until the next session? Something that helps me achieve the next step in the creative process. Thanks,
Jack Za via email

Reamplification Redux Hello Scott Dorsey: I have a quick question about the Reamplification box shown on the recordingmag.com website (www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/314.html). The transformer (MT-4152-ND) is shown on its datasheet to have a frequency range that starts at 300 Hz. Does this cause problems bringing the low range through, especially when using it on bass guitar? Or does the tiny current and low signal strength allow the low end to get on through with no problem? I use 5-string bass a lot, and want to make sure it will still carry down to near 30 Hz. Thanks,
Carl Williams via email

Hello Jack, thanks for writing. If the engineer knows his/her stuff and the session went well (meaning it didn’t abruptly have to come to a halt because the clock ran out or for whatever reason), your tracks should come to you on a medium that you can use at home if that’s how you work, and they should have healthy levels and be free from distortion. Aside from that, what is on them and what they sound like is up to you—if you pay, you call the shots, and if you’re clear about what you want you should get it. Did you approve the choice of mics? Do you wish there to be some degree of compression on the way in? Do you wish there to be other effects already printed during tracking? Are you paying for simultaneously DI’d and miked tracks? Do you wish there to be subgrouped or submixed tracks? Do you want to pay for a rough mix so you have a better idea about what you’re faced with, or will you do that yourself at home? It’s up to you. Best—LzR Jack, I’d like to add a thought or two. You should be clear with yourself, your bandmates, and your engineer and the other studio staff on what you mean by “the next step in the creative process”. By this stage of your long recording career, you are hopefully very aware of the fact that the studio is no place to be playing with creative ideas you could have worked out ahead of time in preproduction, like arrangements, charts, and so forth. With the clock ticking, you should be laser-focused on capturing the best possible performances in the session, and when it comes time to mix, there shouldn’t be any second-guessing about which takes and tracks will go into your mixes. Have the engineer provide you with copies that let you listen to the quality of the tracks and determine what needs retracking for technical or creative reasons. You don’t need a polished mix to determine that a guitar track was rushed or that the overheads are distorting on one song. Talk to the engineer about what you can take home that will help you determine if you can move forward with confidence or if something needs to be redone. Good luck!—MM

Scott Dorsey replies: Carl, this is addressed a little bit in the text, although I don’t address this concern explicitly in the article. The transformer is rated only down to 300 Hz at full power, so we’re using it at far less than full power in order to get more low-end extension. It’ll go down remarkably low without distorting... how low depends on how powerful your pickups are, but it’s well below 20 Hz.—SD Carl responds: Wow, what a fast response. You guys are great! Anyway, I’m looking to do something similar on the other end of the recording chain. I have designed a MOSFET active D-Box for guitar/bass that has extremely high input impedance (10 Megohm) so it makes passive pickups really sing. It also makes it possible to just stick a cheap piezo on an instrument. This D-Box is phantom powered and ground loops aren’t an issue when you plug a guitar or bass into it. It’s not the right box to use with an electric piano or something like that. What I am wanting to do is make my box have an unbalanced output that is isolated that will be able to run to the on-stage guitar or bass amp. This implementation of the transformer will give me that ability. Thanks again!—CW And thank you, Carl, for sharing this idea with us. Please keep us posted and let us know when you have a finished design to share, if that’s possible.—MM Corrections In our review of FXpansion BFD Eco (July 2010), I mistakenly mentioned that the product is available as a download as well as boxed on DVD. FXpansion informs us that this is not the case: the download version of the product we received was created especially for reviews and other nonretail purposes and is not available for sale to end users. Sorry about that. In Beto Hale’s article “Recording the Music for a Theatre Play” (August 2010), we accidentally omitted the fact that the lovely artwork for the Pachamanca: Mother Earth playbill shown in the article was provided Courtesy of the Americas Theatre Arts Foundation. Recording regrets the omission.—MM

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RECORDING SEPTEMBER 2010
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Recording - September 2010

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