Recording - February 2011 - 18

Brian Tarquin:

Interview by Lorenz Rychner Photos by Ricky Restiano

Ins and Outs of a Guitar Recording
Guitar geniuses get together for a tribute album— here are their tracking secrets
Brian Tarquin is a guitarist who produces recordings featuring his own playing and that of many Guitar Greats. He also frequently contributes to Recording, sharing tips and techniques about the work he does in his Jungle Room studio in New York. This time around we asked him very specific questions about details we heard on tracks from his recent double-CD release Guitar Masters Vol. 3 & 4: Les Paul Dedication, a project that is near and dear to Brian’s heart because of the personal connection he had with Les Paul. The project features a veritable Who’s Who of famous pickers, shredders, and slingers. You can hear excerpts of the tracks he discusses on Recording’s website, in the Magazine Extras section of our Resource Library.—LzR

El Becko
On “El Becko” I hear the high soaring lead [right at the start of the excerpt on our website] coming equally from the left and right speakers, but not narrowly down the middle—how did you treat it? Brian Tarquin: I played the intro lead with a white Les Paul Custom and I used the Framptone Amp Switcher. This allows you to plug your guitar into two different amps to play both at once, or to switch between the two with an A/B switch. I wanted a fat tone and to stay away from the typical narrow center guitar sound. I used two combo amps, a Mesa Boogie Mark II with a 12" EV and a Soldano Reverb-O-Sonic with 4x10" Celestion Speakers. I placed the amps in two different rooms, the Mesa in the live room and the Soldano in the control room. I used a beyerdynamic M160 about 4 inches from one of the 10" speakers of the Soldano cabinet and a sE Electronics RT1 Ribbon Tube mic about 6 inches from the EV speaker in the Mesa. What was the signal chain?
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RECORDING FEBRUARY 2011

I recorded the entire track on analog tape, Ampex MM1200 2" 24 track tape—very old school, but I find it necessary to capture the natural tone of the drums, bass and even guitar. I used the mic preamps of the classic Trident 70 Series Recording console, going directly to tape. At mixdown I hardpanned the two guitars, Soldano left and Mesa right, then used the Eventide GTR4000 for delay on the Soldano guitar track and a delay from the Eventide Eclipse. I used a classic Urei LA-4 limiter on the Soldano track and a Purple Audio MC77 on the Mesa track. Who is playing on “El Becko”? Randy Coven on bass, Reggie Pryor on drums, Tommy Mandel on piano and organ, and I played the rhythm guitar tracks and first guitar solo. Guest guitarist Gary Hoey was on the road at the time, so I sent him a WAV file of the song so he could play his melody and solo parts on Pro Tools. Now the tricky part is always to make sure to give a click-track count-off so when you get back the tracks you can line the guitar parts up to the song. I

Recording - February 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - February 2011