EQ Magazine - February 2008 - (Page 35) METAL Basically, I was adjusting phase to get the most low-end clarity. When everything sounded good, I’d pop on the subwoofer for Johnny so he could feel the bass as he played. Did you submix the three sources into a single, monaural bass track? Archambault: The bass tracks were not submixed at all, because I wanted [album mixer] Andy Wallace to have three distinct bass sounds available. I didn’t want to deny him the opportunity to, say, add some distortion to a chorus in order to pump up a song’s dynamics. Considering the range of sounds and styles on the record, did Johnny use a number of different basses for his tracks? Archambault: Johnny’s Ernie Ball 30th Anniversary Stingray with ebony fretboard is on 80 percent of the record. There were a couple of other basses around, and we’d definitely record a bit, and then sit back and decide which bass would be best for the track. On “Dear God” he used an ESP 5-string bass, and he had him overdub a wall of bass for “Scream, which he really dug. ” Did you use any effects? Archambault: I’m a huge fan of the Visual Sound H2O Liquid Chorus & Echo pedal, and it sounds great on bass. You don’t want to overdo it, but if you use it lightly, it’s really cool. So we used it on the cleaner parts of the slower songs to add that Guns ’N Roses chorus sound that the guys love. How did you audition mics for M. Shadows, and which model was selected as the main vocal mic? Archambault: Actually, when we cut City of Evil at Ocean Way Recording in 2005, we discovered the perfect vocal mic for Shadows. That studio is like a microphone museum, and we literally put up every mic they had, from an AKG C 414 to a Neumann U47. The mic that brought up every nuance of Shadows’ voice was an AKG C12. Luckily, when we did the vocals at Eldorado for the new album, the studio had not one, but two C12s. This allowed us to A/B the two mics, and you’d be surprised at how different they sounded. We ended up using C12 MIXED number two, because it enhanced Shadows’ gritty vocals with a little more bite than C12 number one exhibited. Can you detail the vocal signal chain? Archambault: As with the guitar and bass sessions, we kept our single chain pretty much the same from song to song. The mic preamp was an Aurora GTQ2 Mark 3—which is a Neve 1073 copy made by Jeff Tanner—and the compressor was a silver-face Universal Audio 1176. The compression ratio was usually 8:1, with what we call the “Dr. Pepper” settings: a slow attack, a fast release, input level at 10 o’clock, and output level at 2 o’clock. I also set up the other C12 in another part of the studio to accommodate low vocals or background vocals. This mic was routed through a Vintech X73 preamp and a dbx 160 compressor, and this is what most of the guest singers used. However, I put up a Neumann U47 to round out the girls in the choir parts, because the C12 really has a bite to its sound. Also, as the brighter C12 was Shadows’ mic, I wanted to make sure he had his own sonic space in the mix. http://www.jzmic.com http://www.jzmic.com
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