Analog Guitar recording

[jdsowa]

Well, Page didn't produce/engineer the BBC stuff I don't believe, so his mic schemes wouldn't have been in use for that.

The one pic from that session looks like a bunch of dynamic mics, so your SM57 would probably be fine. Though, to really get a trebly sound, you might want to look into a condenser microphone. The Bock 195 would be a good one. Anything below that and the quality might suffer.

The big thing that links these sounds together is the bleed from having multiple microphones up in the room. So you've got a mic on the amp, but you've got a few mics on the drum kit, and a mic for the singer, and a mic over there on the bassist's cab, and they're panned in different ways. Of course you'll need a room with nice acoustics, which can really start to add up in $$. I would say that's far more important than using an analog deck like the Tascam, which is a consumer deck and several notches below what would've been used to record these records.

[ocote]

Thanks for the advice ! About the tape bleeding, the problem is I am in a two piece electronic music band and every instruments will be recorded in the computer through the apogee ensemble so there won't be live recording of bass, drums, guitar and singer... Every part of the sound recording will be made with digital instrument in the computer, samples etc. The only instrument recorded through microphone with an intended analog sound/feel is the guitar.

I was not talking about the overall sound of the record but only the guitar tone. Anybody knows what recording gear Jack White used on the first Stripes album ?

For the room acoustic sound I was planning to record it in a church as where I live in Montreal there's plenty of church pretty vacant. So if I understand you think I am better recording it through the computer right away instead of in a tape reel to reel and after in the computer ?

For the trebly sound of albums like Raw power and BBC sessions is it about how it was recorded or how it was mix etc. ?

Out of topic : And what about the idea of running the signal of a digital track out of the Ensemble through a cranked TEAC A-2300SX or a similar reel to reel to get a distorted sound or tape saturation ? I heard Keith Richards used something similar for his sound on tracks like jumping' jack flash, street fighting man with acoustic guitars and a Philips cassette recorder....

Thanks for your help.

[jdsowa]

The Phillips thing that Keith used was very lo-fi. He played an acoustic guitar track (and they also used the miniature drum kit) into the built-in mic on the unit and it had a built-in compressor which crushed the sound. They then took that track and sent it to the high quality multitrack reel in the control room and overdubbed other instruments on top. So they were only doing that as an effect for 1 track per song. You still need other guitars and things recorded on a higher quality format.

The church could be a good place. You don't actually have to have other instruments in order to use other mics. You have your one mic on the guitar amp, then just put another mic or two up around the room in different places, and then pan them so you get a stereo sound. This is how you get the kind of room bleed sound you're thinking of. One or even two mics close up to an amp isn't going to cut it.

The kind of saturation you're going to get from running a track out to a teac reel is going to be pretty subtle. It's not going to magically get you that sound.