I record guitar overdubs for clients. Which of these two boxes would you choose?

Neither unit is terribly flexible or ideal for the wide range of guitarists/sounds you probably encounter.

I'd go with a Distressor over a Fatso and probably an LA3 over an LA2A.

DISTRESSOR !!

Thanks for the replies.

I should've mentioned that I'm bored with the distressor; there's also something about the midrange that sounds congested to me.

Anything else for acoustic & electric guitars?

i'm in to the 1176 and the 33609 on gtrs, they give them a nice transient when they start playing. 1176 is more extreme, the 33609 more mellow, chunky.
-brian

If you're recording amplifiers (and especially distorted guitars), I'll vote for NO compressor when recording guitars.

Well, you bring up a good point there. Why spend $2k - $4k on a piece of gear that I might not need? I haven't had any complaints of tracks being "under-compressed".

Keep the opinions coming - I'm open to hearing them all.

I agree with that. I never put a comp before recording on an amplified guitar. You can always add it after the fact. I think this is maybe a holdover of recording to tape, letting the medium do some of the work before you get all drastic. Obviously, that isn't gonna fly in DAW-land.

But...

If you don't need to compress it on the way in, why would you want to? You can always add compression later, but you can _never_ take it away.

In the case of distorted guitars, compression is useful in preventing overs during palm mutes. I use an LA2A for this very application, and like it fine.

I'd rather have the compression right pre-DAW, (whether that means compressed or not).

dfegad compressor plugins

Get another amp!

One other thought, if you use a couple of mics on the cab, and you don't want to compress while tracking, keep the tracks separate rather than mixing the two mics down to a single track. For example, you might want to compress a 121 just a bit while leaving a 57 alone to do it's icepick thing.

If I'm trying to control overs, I don't find the LA2A to be that useful since it's attack is so slow; instead, I just turn the preamp down

Yes, an LA2A may be slow, but it beats a palm mute to the punch everytime. The envelope of a palm mute is very slow to develop, but it can contain a suprisingly large amount of energy. In most cases, there is no way it doesn't need gain reduction at some point, so I typically catch it as early as possible.

Of course you are right, in general, the LA2A is a tad slow for most typical limiting.

The LA2A is great, just not on electric guitars.

Conversely it's wonderful on an acoustic guitar.

I prefer a touch of the Distressor if anything. Albeit, I'm not using the thing for compression, but for girth and that in-your-face-icepick-in-the-forehead sound.

3:1 Attack-9, Release-2, Brit Mode, Stereo Link (in)

For guitars, the FATSO schools every other thing out there. It doesn't have the midrange thing that the distressor does, and all of its features work so well on a lot of different guitar sounds.

Hey Chris!

Knowing you... and your style... I would say for that pushed chordal and picked stuff that you are so good at... the LA-2A would absolutely knock your socks off. (The orignal... not the re-issue). I did a session up at Quad recently and we used their's for a guitar track we did (through Kenny Greenbergs AC-30....only mic was an R121). I didn't compress a whole lot... just some. It sat PERFECTLY where I wanted it to be, and the LA-2A added so much girth... it just killed me! I played the track for Kenny later (it was for different band, so it wasn't him playing guitar) and he immediately as the song kicked off said... "now THAT's a great guitar sound!!".

The LA-2A is a bit slow, and I normally wouldn't have thought of it for electric guitars... but after that experience I have turned to the them more... and loved it! I think it might be JUST the thing for you.

An 1176 and Neve 2254 or my other favorites for bigger rock guitars (power chording, etc). However... WHEN I compress these days... I am still loving my distressor on most things. However.... for big power chords and stuff like that... I have been going without compression a lot lately.

p.s. Don't you have a special delivery coming soon?? Would love to hear that's going.

Any MINUTE now. Too bad Vintage King doesn't have a baby registry.

LMAO

No doubt!! Every newborn baby needs a vintage LA-2A! lol!!

It completely depends on the style of music your recording..
I usaully go to an 1176/LA2A/Tube tech..depending on track density,BPM,style.

On distorted gt., I like to bring the gain up on the LA-2A and add just a db or two of GR. It seems to help it sit in the mix better. I also agree about it helping smooth out crazy palm mutes...