Acoustic treatment of a closet for electric guitar cabinet mic tracking

[BeatlesForever]

Dear friends, hello!
I'm back with some questions for you wizards of sound, as again I wasn't able to find a sure answer around the net in regards to my quest, or better, I'm a bit doubtful about what to do, so I need to sort out some questions that I've found contradictory around, hoping my case to be useful for the rest of the community to clear ideas.

Here's the case:

outside the room I treated months back ( see thread here Room Measurement After Consulting Gearslutz ) , I have a lil closet, which is built under a set of wood stairs which goes to the attic...of course, the closet, being closet, is closed ( pardon me the wordplay ), separated from the stairs by its diagonal wall, and from the hall by a lil wood door.
Watching it from the hall, imagine to see a cut triangle, as the diagonal wall of the closet doesn't finish at the feet of the stairs, but before, thus terminating with a small straight wall, much lower in height if compared to the closet's opposite wall in corrispondence to the top of the stairs..
it's dimensions, are about 5'(L) x 3'(W) x 6.5(H)....the small wall above mentioned's height is about 3'.

My plan would be to play my guitar routed to the Triaxis / TCE Gmajor / power amp chain, INSIDE my "control room" ( lol) ( see thread), and route out the whole chain to a Marshall cabinet which is meant to be inside this closet, thus monitoring its sound took by an SM57 mic, outputed in the DAW monitors, and so easily tweaking it from my listening position. I would tweak only the Triaxis, and would keep the Gmajor only as noise reductor ( no effects, I use them later, via the DAW's plug-ins,as I'd use the gmajor effects only in a live situation)...you all know how dirty is the Triaxis ! lol !
The power amp would be tweaked only to adjust the global output master & presence...

My aim is PRIMARLY to get a fast, focused, surgical metal tone a-la Dream Theater, Cynic, Gordian Knot when I perform all the gyms required, and a fat, destructive, devastating tone when I play the chords, but avoiding muddies, boomies and so on, just to have it TIGHT.
...but as you probably know, the Triaxis is a good machine also for generating other kind of tones, bluesy, cleany, crunchy...it has 8 different circuits to emulate different kind of preamplification...I'd simply love to get 'em all, I want it all lol!!

Now, to arrive at the core of my request, I ask you wizards to help me in choosing one of these listed alternatives in regards to the acoustic treatment I have to provide inside the targetted closet, or, if better ones, to suggest me something else, not-so-expensive, to achieve my goal...just keep in mind my first aim is not insolation, as I could kill my neighborous whenever I want, (no pity for the enemy lol), but to achieve a good sound from that closet .

The closet would be also used as vocal booth, if physics let me do this...but this is less important

Options:

1- Proceed with the construction and placement of bass traps inside the closet in the similar way I did for the room in the above mentioned thread, covering part of the surfaces, or all of them if needed, thus achieving a supposed better balance in taming the low frequencies, as opposed to suck out only the highs and the mids. This would mean less money to spend, but again some work to put up pillows of rockwool, and I'm tired of it!! and will it do the job? I've seen a post of Ethan elsewhere in which he stated that you don't achieve anything with bass traps in a 4' x 4' booth, hope to have reported this correctly...

2- Buy a mixture of Auralex stuff ( LENRD as corners bass traps, and Studiofoams 2" or better 4" for walls ) and here I'd like to know how much of them to put, corners for sure, but fill all the surfaces? or better only at the reflections areas...and the ceiling? will it become too dead, and still the low frequencies alive? ( the low E of the guitar is 82,41 Hz, how do I tame that, with a whip??)...I've seen a post of Ethan elsewhere in which he stated that a similar approach with acoustic foam (no bass traps) would work quite fine for a vocal booth, but for tracking a bass amp or even a guitar amp is another story.

3- Go with thick blankets around the surfaces, a carpet on the floor, and leave the ceiling reflective, or viceversa, the floor reflective and ceiling to absorb?
I've heard of peeps doing fine with it, and also big bands in the past achieved their guitar tones in this way, tho it seems to me a bit , let's say, "raw"....not to say that there's a general mood which states, especially for very small rooms, that better to sound dead or not sound at all, rather than sound bad to achieve an ambience at any cost.

4- Any other solutions ?

I thank you in advance for listening to my requests, and sorry for making your eyes burning with all these words, but I need to be precise when I expose my nightmares lmao...of course I will update this thread with pictures of the closet I'm talking about, so you can see what kind of bloody hole it is...
and of course thanks for any reply and wise suggestion I might receive from this wonderful, warm and polite community_

[Ethan Winer]

I don't know where you saw what you attributed by me, but that's not my opinion at all. Bass traps are the only salvation for a too-small booth. Thin wall foam and small corner foam will not make a room that small sound acceptable. Blankets are even less effective. Can't you just leave the guitar amp out in the main room? Maybe use a "power soak" or some such to crank the amp without making your ears bleed.

--Ethan

________________
The Acoustic Treatment Experts

[BeatlesForever]

and in fact I misunderstood, you were talking about insulation in that thread ,not improving the sound of the room, which is always possible with bass traps..but insulation is another story...now I see it, sorry for misunderstand...

[BeatlesForever]

then my question is:
if I can provide 60 kg/m^3 density 2" thick rockwool panels:

- how thick panels I should build?
6" ? probably the cab won't enter in the closet anymore
4" ? bye bye vocal booth !
2"? would be perfect !

- have I to put panels wherever covering all the surfaces of the closet?
or I may put 'em only in some relevant areas? where? reflection zones?

Thanks again for the suggestions

[avare]

Originally Posted by BeatlesForever

then my question is:
if I can provide 60 kg/m^3 density 2" thick rockwool panels:

- how thick panels I should build?
6" ? probably the cab won't enter in the closet anymore
4" ? bye bye vocal booth !
2"? would be perfect !

- have I to put panels wherever covering all the surfaces of the closet?
or I may put 'em only in some relevant areas? where? reflection zones?

Thanks again for the suggestions

Sorry, but the minimum is 4" thick.

Andre

[PaulRain]

untill I will have the right room for tracking Electric guitars I decided to go for other solutions.......
- Smaller amp, so you can push it without removing the tiles from the floor
- Power soak to have a smaller output, same as before
- Power soak with line output and Cabinet impulses...more versatile somehow
- Hardware Amp sim
- Software Amp sim

[BeatlesForever]

thanks guys for replying, but I cannot understand what is the benefits provided by a power soak...I mean, if if use a power soak and track my cabinet in the main room, how may I monitor the sound thru the DAW speakers, just to make the correct sound for the cabinet?...with the power soak and the cabinet inside the same room, I would always hear the sound of the main monitors blended with the sound of the cab, so for my needs I'm forced to keep the cabinet elsewhere...I'm really not so good at mixing, at the point to make sounds trusting that blend, that's why I'm asking for a "closet" solution...
I will go with the 4" bass traps, at this point...
thanks my friends