So as well 3 weeks from now I will be doing something I just about never do. Recording BIG guitars at home. I got a JCM 2000, Dual Rec, and a 5150 heads coming and a 1960, JCM 800, and 5150 cab coming here as well. Usually when I record guitar I just put the head on top of the amp and the cable is never more then 20 feet. Unfortunatly at home The amp will be about 30 feet away. So I have always been told its better to keep the guitar cable short and the speaker cable long if going long distances so here are my questions:
1. Do you all agree its better to do the long cable run on the speaker cable side or the guitar cable side(I will not be purchasing one of those line driver things either like the Smart or whatever sorry)?
2. What brand cable do you like to use for a long speaker cable run? What gauge? Where do you buy it? i dont mind spending some dough on a 30-50 foot speaker cable if its gonna be worth it.
3. Any tips knowledge on what you usually do in this situation?

I've always kept heads/preamps in the control room. I've just used longer speaker cables.

We use short Monster and Mogami cables for the guitar to the amps in the CR, and 60, 80 and 100 foot-long Mogami speaker cables from the amps to the cabs out in the live room.

I place the 1073 pres out in the live room right next to the mics and lately my fave comps have been LA3As for git compression on the way to tape. The 1073s are cabled directly to the LA3As, who are cabled directly into the back of the Studer.

My personal preference when there are two guitarists is to have them both track at the same time. The bleed between the cabs out in the live room makes for a bigger, more organic sound with natural reverb. Like standing in a club or hall at a rock concert. If one of them messes up a take, they have to re-do it together, but that stimulus to play well together can be a positive thing.

Am curious to hear what everyone else is doing.

That is an excelent idea... the dual amp/player thing
I'll try that soon!

Great idea Jon! I'm sure it makes things more musical due to people playing together.

Are you guys all recording those guitars to some big, fat $20,000 tape machine or going straight to disk? For those of you going to tape first, how much of the saturated guitar kachunk, articulation etc is lost in the transfer?
I hear great distorted guitars on cd's and have yet to accomplish anything other than "digital" sounding guits going straight in. Am I doomed to settle for this unless I buy an analog recorder too?
I apologize for the tangent lol.

Btw, I keep my VHT head in my "control room" and the cabs in my living room. Those damn tooob amps make a great heater while they're crankin out the tone .

Steve

VHT's are great. I really like the pitbull. Some of the Bogner stuff is great too!

I'd go with a long speaker cable, any kind of 12 gauge is great and even 16 gauge is ok. I have a couple of 50 foot's here which have never let me down. Just the standard CBI stuff from Victors.

I've done the two players, one room thing before. That works if it's loose enough. Don't try it on hardcore or anything that needs to be super tight. You'll have a bit of a mess on your hands.

Depends on who you talk to. I'd say it's easier to get great sounds on tape but you can also get great sounds to digital. You just gotta work it a bit differently. What's your usual guitar setup? Ax, amp, mics, etc.

Hi Jay,

My typical signal chain is PRS guitar-VHT Pitbull head-either VHT 4x12 or Mesa 2x12-Vintech X73 pre-Digi 192-Hd core. I also have a Fatso and Distressor and have messed with those too.
I can get it to sound pretty nice coming out of the Hd to my monitors, but once I record that puppy, the playback is a different animal than when it went in. It's less articulate, a lil mushy and it seems to have lost some of the "liveness" of the sound.
I'm hitting the 192 so that the yellow only lights on the peak parts and am recording at 88.2.
Clean guitars are fine. It's those damned beefy, high gain guitars that seem to suffer most. I am surely no expert, but I can plainly hear an obvious difference between the audition and the playback. I am at a point now where I'm about to give up on the possibility of the digi 192 doing my VHT amp justice and buy a tape recorder then send the tracks to PT after the tape does it magic for me. The thing I don't understand is that it seems that if recording direct to disk eats some of the beauty of my guit sound, then going to tape first would just put off the inevitable and whatever magic the tape added would be lost in the conversion too.
I'd love to hear some heavier guitar recordings that were successfully done going straight to disk and find out how it was done. Thus far it's a big mystery to me...right up there with who was behind the Kennedy assasination haha.

I'd love some guidance for my weiry soul,
thx,
Steve

Guitarzan.....

that's a great setup. I really like the vht's thru marshall cabs. I usually run 1960a(4X12 w/75's) and a marshall or bogner 4X12 with vintage 30's. It acts almost as a crossover. The 75's are really bright while the 30's are alot more ballsy and can get that speaker pump(like when your playing and mute, it's followed by a chuncky boom)

my mic choices are royer 121's, 414'a, 57's

Also the Bogner Cheva is worth looking into as well...it's a great head. I usually use 1272(custom racked with seperate gain and output faders) and push the input gain pretty hard. I've been really happy with results into PT.

I suppose you could buy 1inch or something. I've heard of people taking 1 inch 8tracks and getting custom heads( 3 tracks:2 audio and 1 devoted to smpte)

Jon,

Can you detail the benefit you feel you are getting from having the Mic Pre's out in the live area?

Did you do an A/B?

Are you doing this with most things you record these days?

Inc vocals?

Do you feel let down by the studios existing wirieing? Or is it 'just one of those things'

Seems like a PITA.

Do you ever add EQ out in the live area (to a mic pre / eq) and listen to it in the CR?

Anyone else doing this?



BTW see my post on the Little Labs PCP distro guitar splitter for a cool mic phase alignment trick..

here...

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthrea...?threadid=2708

That's one of the things I love about the (live) projects I work on.

Hi Jules,

I go for the shortest, simplest route during sessions I produce, which usually includes connecting 1073s next to the mics with 1-foot XLR cables...and sometimes running out to the live room to tweak EQs (if needed) and even compressors (I don't mind not sitting in the CR chair all the time) which are patched directly into the Studer. It's not a PITA, it's a part of the job that I like.

Nevertheless, many free-lancers don't do it; they just use the fixed studio wiring...and I don't blame them...if I'm engineering for a client (not producing), and if the time budget is somewhat tight, I tend to do what is quickest too...whatever that may be.

I haven't A/Bed it and the difference might be inaudible. The Mogami studio wiring is very good. It's just a question, for me, of preferring the shortest signal path from mic to pre, and the most direct one after that to tape...when I can.