Recording - July 2013 - 34

and placement options. Leaving aside arguments of tonal quality and playing
feel (a subjective matter), the one caveat I’d offer is that to get the best tone
out of a good amp sim, it helps to not only be familiar with the sound and controls of the real amp being modeled, but with the typical miking techniques that
might provide the best results in the real world.

Reanimate (with re-amping)
The analog way of adding amp/mic tone to a
direct-recorded guitar track is a process called reamplification or “re-amping”. (The name comes from
the original Reamp, now made and sold by Radial
Engineering.) This involves pulling a recorded guitar
signal out of the DAW (via extra outputs—you’ll
need more than stereo I/O on your interface for
this), and sending it through a real, miked-up amp in
the studio. The mic’s signal is then brought back and
recorded on a separate track. This allows the option
to choose an amp for its particular tone or distortion
after hearing a more fully-finished version of the mix,
and it puts back a lot of control in the engineer’s
hands at the later stages of a project, much in the
way that the use of sampled instruments introduced
previously unheard-of flexibility at the mix stages.
Just as with direct recording, an appropriate
“re-amping” converter box should be used to
guarantee proper level and impedance for the
transfer of the line-level recorded signal back to
the instrument-level guitar amp input. The process
is demoed in EG video Part 4.
Virtual guitar tone
The other approach is digital, and there are
many options. Now it’s true that some guitarists
and engineers feel that digital amp simulators
(amp “sims”, hardware or software) just don’t cut it
when compared to the real thing. It’s certainly true
that the experience of performing through a digitally-simulated amp, run straight into a DAW, can
feel different than standing in a room with a real
amp on the verge of feedback, feeling the rush of
air and pressure of the sound waves.
However, in many cases, studio recordings are
made with the guitarist in the control room and a
miked-up amp in the separate studio room—playing through an amp sim feels very much like this.
Of course, not all amp sims are created equal,
but these days the better ones provide a good
sense of dynamics and touch response (something lacking in the early days of the technology),
making the playing feel much closer to performing through a physical amp.
Hardware-based amp sims, like the venerable
POD Series and other Line 6 and Roland virtual
amps, can be employed as an alternative to a
real amp at the initial session; the ones that are
actual amps can still be miked up using all the
same techniques discussed above. But more to
the point, for this discussion, are plug-in virtual
amps. These are available from a host of companies including Line 6, Native Instruments, IK
Multimedia, Avid, Peavey, Studio Devil, and
many others. Running a direct-recorded guitar
track through one of these is a piece of cake, and
usually dozens of different simulated amp models
and speaker cabinets are provided with the ability to mix & match, including virtual mic selection
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RECORDING July 2013

Best of both worlds
It’s not uncommon to combine the traditional and the modern approaches
when it comes to recording guitar. Quite often, an engineer will record, on separate tracks, both miked-up signals from real amps and (with the use of an appropriate DI splitter box) a direct signal straight from the guitar on its own track—
something that is routinely done with electric bass. This offers maximum flexibility without compromise. You have the sound of the real thing, but if for any reason a different sound turns out to be needed as the mix progresses, you have the
raw material of the guitarist’s performance on the DI track, available to be used
to rethink the amp tone from scratch, via re-amping or plug-in amp sims.
It also allows for more options in mixing, like doubling a guitar track with the
same performance run through two distinctly different-sounding amps, one the
original and the other a re-amp or sim-generated tone. That’s more a mixing consideration (that would be the subject of a whole separate article), but doubling is
something that might even be addressed during the recording/tracking stages.

A previously recorded signal is sent back to an amp for reamping.
Two-by-two
As most readers probably know, doubling means having two (or more!) performances of the same musical part, providing extra thickness or a wider
spread (if panned to opposite sides of a mix). Doublings can be created artificially, by duplicating a track and delaying the copy by a few (typically
15–20) milliseconds.
But often a more natural-sounding doubling is desired, and that’s best
achieved by having the player perform the part more than once during the
tracking sessions, with the goal being two near-identical versions of the musical part, but with just enough human performance variation to make them distinct. This is also an opportunity to switch things up—recording the doubled
parts with different amp settings, or even through different amps on the different takes, as well as running DIs simultaneously for maximum flexibility down
the road.
Wrap-up
We’re starting to touch on topics now that may have more to do with mixing
than recording, so this is a good place to pause. However, we’re not done yet!
Guitars come in two flavors, and recording the acoustic variety brings up many
unique issues and challenges—and that will be the subject of next month’s article. In the meantime, happy hunting for the perfect guitar tone!
Joe Albano (albano@recordingmag.com) is an engineer/producer, musician,
and educator living and working in New York City. Learn more about his work at
www.rooftopproductions.com.

http://www.rooftopproductions.com

Recording - July 2013

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