ProAudio Review - March 2008 - (Page 18)

X/AUDIO by Strother Bullins Great DIY Rock Guitar Tracks on-MIDI self-recordists — many of whom are musicians regularly performing at any local live music venue — seem to spend ample time gambling on the simple rock ‘n’ roll trifecta of drums, guitars, and vocals. For whatever reason, especially within this subgroup of musicians, rock ’n’ roll’s perfect simplicity seems to only naturally exist at the beginning stages of the art, where our skills as both performers and critical listeners are not necessarily bringing pleasure to others because our talents are so raw. In other words, the better we technically become as musicians and self-recordists, the more convoluted the recording process seems to become, often to a fault. I’m here to remind you that rock guitar recording can be incredibly simple if you allow it to be. Together with a fellow musician/guitarist/self-recordist, I recently proved my new favorite (and thankfully time-tested) DIY recording theory to myself by using only the right and necessary ingredients: great hands, a great guitar, a great amp, a great effects unit, and a great mic or two. The hands were attached to a 31-year-old riff master, deft soloist, and all around nice guy; the guitar was a Les Paul Standard. Here’s a rundown of how we kept things simple and satisfying. FIGURE 1: GREAT AMP The Peavey 6505+ Tube Guitar Amplifier is a 120W RMS (16, 8, or 4 ohms) two-channel head featuring separate EQ, Resonance, and Presence controls per channel, PLUS a footswitch for channel select, effects loop, and adding Crunch for extra easy gain. The 6505+ is a beefed-up version of the standard 6505, which is essentially the same thing as the now-classic 5150, a “specialist amp” originally designed by Peavey engineers for the Atomic Punk himself, Mr. Eddie Van Halen. The 6505+ contains an extra preamp tube, a 12AX7, dedicated to Crunch and the brand new Clean channel; its predecessor, the 5150 II, offered just the Rhythm channel, no clean. Simply said, the 6505+ has a sonic range unlike any other I or the guitar player has tried to record together or separately — from all the regular major rock amp players such as Marshall and Mesa-Boogie, etc. Song after song, a uniquely perfect, record-ready tone was easily dialed in thanks to this particular head amp. Feeding a Mesa-Boogie/Celestion-loaded 2 X 12 cabinet at full throttle, chunky riffs ripped our pants legs. It was beautiful; it sounded modern, classic, and old, depending on your needs. But it always rocked. Essentially, any guitarist who would ever play on a relatively loud stage could find the 6505+ incredibly useful: this is, I’d say, the measure of a great rock amp. FIGURE 2: GREAT EFFECTS With our enthusiasm for recording at a high, the guitarist and I moved on to the next necessary component in our pre-recording chain: the Great Effects Unit, a.k.a. Eventide TimeFactor. The concept of the TimeFactor is simple – guitarists have long loved Eventide digital effects, but would rather stomp on a box than screw around with rack-mount, menu-deep user inter- everything between subtle sheens of delay to Technicolor, hallucinogenic waves of effect, depending on the song at hand. Ah, Eventide. And best of all, like the 6505+, it always sounded great with a bit of enjoyable tweaking and a desire to find the right Photo credit: Doug Rice/Allure effect. It also sounded “finished” — our goal in letting a great rig do all the work on the front side rather than fretting over aural details post-tracking. When the guitarist wasn’t rocking straightup riffs via 6505+, the TimeFactor’s nine distinct delays found a way onto recorded results; yes, we were adventurous to the point that this Eventide should probably be credited as an official instrument next to the guitar if any of this is ever printed up and sold (think of U2’s The Edge and his “Infinite Reverb,” because it got crazy at times). The signal became something that “made” the guitar track artistic, something that neither of us wanted to touch again — the last time it was that easy, a seasoned pro engineer was twirling the knobs for him. You have to love great effects! FIGURE 3: GREAT MIC(S) If we weren’t going to touch it, it was time to shrink-wrap it and send it to Binaryland for safe keeping. We had a good preamp to a good converter into a good DAW at a good conversion rate; in between, we just needed a great transducer, or two. With the cabinet placed in a large, fairly reverberant room, I picked up Heil Sound’s proven and affordable PR 30 and PR 40 dynamic cardioid microphones [“X-Audio,” PAR January 2008], put the PR 30 about an inch from one of the 2 X 12 cab’s speaker cones and the PR 40 facing the amp about two feet away, and tapped Record. Depending on the take, we moved the PR-40 as close as a foot away from the cab and as far out as six feet; voila, all the reverb we thought we needed was now on its own track, too. When there was no perceived need for natural reverb, the PR 30 alone was enough to capture the performance. Finally, with a great mic or two in place, we were in business. “EVERYTHING WORKS IF YOU LET IT” Yes, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick was right (and not just because he has recorded some of the most skillfully raw, effortless-sounding and dead-on guitar performances of his own). As guitarists, your hands, guitar, amp, and effects working together as they should will most often yield the right results with no need to gamble on too much other junk in the chain. Figure 2, a.k.a. Eventide TimeFactor faces. The good folks at Eventide recognized this fact and created the new Eventide Stompboxes series, and the first of the lot is the TimeFactor offering nine of Eventide’s “best” delay effects, plus Looper. Other key features include two I/Os, twin delays with up to three seconds of delay each, 20 user presets with access to any two simultaneously, bright alphanumeric display, MIDI I/O/Thru, and — most importantly — now-to-infinity software upgrades via USB port. As you would expect from Eventide, the TimeFactor is built like a tank. Used in conjunction (and in a variety of routing configurations) with the 6505+, the voice of the guitar chain further developed through 18 | ProAudio Review | March 2008 Subscribe to the Digital Edition of Pro Audio Review http://www.proaudioreview.com/subscribe www.proaudioreview.com http://www.proaudioreview.com http://www.proaudioreview.com/subscribe

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ProAudio Review - March 2008

ProAudio Review - March 2008 Contents Publisher's Page Studio News and New Products Sennheiser MKH 8040 Microphone Digidesign Mbox 2 Micro Studio Spotlight Upsampler X/Audio Live News and New Products Touring Gear From the Road Broadcast News and New Products ION Audio Tape2PC Cassette Archiving System Brauner VMA Large-Diaphragm Microphone Audio Ltd. RMS 2040 Series Post News and New Products First Look NAB Showcase Buyers Guide Single Slice

ProAudio Review - March 2008

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