Guitar distortion

[Glooper]

amberience.. I reckon you might.. not tried with those 15watt ones.. but it might still sound good... Generally the smaller speakers work better with micing than say a Marshall Stack as the mic will pick up more frequencies from the entire cone. With a large speaker you end up concentrating the mic on a single section of the cone, thus ending up with a thinner sound.

To reduce the room noise hang a towel the mic and mic stand and speaker.. but sometimes a bit of roomnoise helps (I sometimes actually stick a 2nd mic in the room to get a natural reverb.. though you won't get a tight sound doing this).. Also remove any delay or reverb on the amp...

Ben

[Amberience]

You mean cover up the amp and mic with a towel right?

[Glooper]

yeah kind of.. the idea is to absorb some of the sound and reduce the room reverb coming back onto the mic to get a sharper sound... a Duvet will absorb the most but a towel might be sufficient...Like I said.. I don't always bother, unless I'm trying to get a really sharp sound... sometimes a bit of room reverb helps..

If you want to get a really full distorted guitar sound then take lots of takes, with the guitar at different frequencies... and pan them...

Ben

[Hink]

A cheap small practice amp and an SM57 is much better than DIing with Amp Sims and is probably as cheap as one of those pod things too.

Or of course use my loops..

ben

I am not sure if saying "much better" is totally correct for a number of reasons. For instance a small practice amp will be fine if you are looking for one or two tones, but the PODs and such (non pc dependant) give the artist a much greater choice of tones to work with. Also the dynamics and character of a small practice amp and something like a 2x12 combo, or a 4x12 half-stack will be quite different, it might not suit the tonal needs of everyone.

For a long time my "coffee table" was a large wooden box that I built to keep lps in years ago. I foamed the inside of the box and disected a small practice amp. I put the face of the amp in the box and put an sm57 in front of it. I took the amp itself and tapped into the power amp only. I used my Marshall 9000 tube pre-amp to feed the power amp. This worked very well for a long time, then I got a sansamp...the box now is the place where wires and cables mate and old pedals and stuff go to die.

The tone of the pre-amp into my 400 watt power amp driving a 4x12 is quite nice, and mic'ing it does sound pretty good. But I live on a busy street and have had too many takes ruined by harleys, sirens, asshole neighbors and trucks...not too mention an open mic in a room means when the family is home recording is a waste of time.

I really think it depends on many conditions, but in my case and many home studio players in a similar position might want a POD or the like. I'm quite pleased with the xt live, but I was also very happy with my 2.0 as well (still am). Last weekend when I saw a Boogie head on ebay (which I won) the first thought I had was the whole one trick pony thing. However, when you have a full stable of equines a one trick pony that does that one trick very well is great. I am thinking of doing the box thing again though, time will tell.

So you'll have to forgive me Ben as I feel your statement was a bit blanketed but good advice...

[t-willy]

I would not have bought AT2 outright, the scheme trapped me and many others I would say.

<raises hand>

i'm pretty disappointed in it so far. for all the damn hype it got anyway. funny enough, i keep going back to AT1 for my distorted sounds. once i play around with AT2 long enough, it'll probably be my main tool - it is for clean sounds and bass right now.

lates

t-willy

[Amberience]

I like how it sounds, but its not revolutionary and the way IK market their stuff really f**king does my nut in.

[t-willy]

..really f**king does my nut in.

lates

t-willy

[chrishurley]

I'd agree with the folks that remark that a POD or Toneport is a good tool for the space-challenged musicians among us just from the standpoint of the range of sounds available. Both of these devices currently have tremendous limitations compared to pure software plugins (i.e. the lack of any meaningful 'reamping' or post-recording tone changing) but the actual sound quality itself seems tolerable with a bit of tweaking. One thing I have trouble with is that the more options available to me, the less work I get done. Having dozens of amp models does not really increase my enjoyment of a product, especially if many of them don't work for me.

I keep buying all this stuff, but I find that I'm liking the sound of my homebrew amp di'd into the computer with a cabinet impulse applied more than anything else at the moment. (I'm using a DI between the amp and the speaker so that it is properly loaded, but the recorded tone needs cabinet simulation)

[Hink]

I'd agree with the folks that remark that a POD or Toneport is a good tool for the space-challenged musicians among us just from the standpoint of the range of sounds available. Both of these devices currently have tremendous limitations compared to pure software plugins (i.e. the lack of any meaningful 'reamping' or post-recording tone changing) but the actual sound quality itself seems tolerable with a bit of tweaking. One thing I have trouble with is that the more options available to me, the less work I get done. Having dozens of amp models does not really increase my enjoyment of a product, especially if many of them don't work for me.

I keep buying all this stuff, but I find that I'm liking the sound of my homebrew amp di'd into the computer with a cabinet impulse applied more than anything else at the moment. (I'm using a DI between the amp and the speaker so that it is properly loaded, but the recorded tone needs cabinet simulation)

Pod xt live is set-up very nice for re-amping if one likes...you set it up on the xt panel



IMO the limitations of latency and cpu usage both are far worse...thogh I'm not finding many limitations in xt live...

[chrishurley]

Unless it has changed, you can't reamp while monitoring the other tracks, which makes it useless. I couldn't figure out how to do it while I had a PODxt. The ASIO latency was also noticably higher than on the Toneport, but I guess that will be remedied shortly when they sync up the PC software.

[chrishurley]

Well, I should clarify- you can do it while monitoring other tracks- if you don't mind running them all through your amp models. :)

[Hink]

Unless it has changed, you can't reamp while monitoring the other tracks, which makes it useless. I couldn't figure out how to do it while I had a PODxt. The ASIO latency was also noticably higher than on the Toneport, but I guess that will be remedied shortly when they sync up the PC software.

I'm not much for re-amping tbh, but I did mess about with it. What did was to leave my xt live set up like my 2.0 was, the analog outputs into my soundcard (Edirol UA5), this way I could take advantage of the direct monitor with zero latency. With the xt live I just set the recording device in my host to the xt live and I monitoring the analog signal that doesn't get recorded (but I could record it if I wished)...when I played back the clean signals I had no problem mointoring the effects for a re-amp...I just didn't use the xt as my output, I used the Edirol as the master out and sent the clean signal to the xt live and returned it back in by selecting xt live for input on another track...

[Lunch Money]

It's true that re-amping as it stands is pretty inflexible for the TonePort. Dunno 'bout the XT. Both will offer an upgrade path to the VST version-- I'm fairly certain (though I can't be 100% until it's announced) that the cost of my TonePort plus the VST version will still be less than the cost of Amplitube2.

BUUuuuuut you never know. The price of the VST Gearbox is actually higher than I thought it'd be so the "upgrade path" might be pretty high.

In any event, back to an earlier question-- I don't find the Line 6 tones too thin to mix at all. That impression might just be from the mental effect of monitoring through small speakers...? I dunno. I find the tones (especially when layered as most producers do) plenty thick.

Greg

[Hink]

It's true that re-amping as it stands is pretty inflexible for the TonePort. Dunno 'bout the XT. Both will offer an upgrade path to the VST version-- I'm fairly certain (though I can't be 100% until it's announced) that the cost of my TonePort plus the VST version will still be less than the cost of Amplitube2.

BUUuuuuut you never know. The price of the VST Gearbox is actually higher than I thought it'd be so the "upgrade path" might be pretty high.

In any event, back to an earlier question-- I don't find the Line 6 tones too thin to mix at all. That impression might just be from the mental effect of monitoring through small speakers...? I dunno. I find the tones (especially when layered as most producers do) plenty thick.

Greg

thanx greg, that reminde me to check to see if the download for gearbox for my xt live was available yet. Remember before I could gear box for toneport but not xt, I would just a page that said not available yet for this product...but a new release is now up, dated 7/27/06...

http://www.line6.com/software/index.html

[Hink]

well it appears as if the model pack that goes with xt is not available yet, I was directed to purchase the vocal pre-amps, but none were there...but my xt is connected to the gearbox