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JC's secrets of clean guitar direct...
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Posted by JC on March 14, 2000 at 12:07:10:

In Reply to: clean guitar tones posted by ryan on March 13, 2000 at 12:34:32:

You already mentioned that you have to record direct, so I won't go through the multiple combonations of mics that have worked for me- i'll say simply that what has worked BEST for me in the past is a large-diaphragm condensor about 1-2' away from the speaker, a tube pre somewhere in the guitar's signal path, and a tube pre on the mic.

One thing that you didn't mention is what guitar specifically you'll be recording. I've found if you're going for a bright, shimmery sound that humbuckers are generally not the best choice- you'll find that you loose some of the high-end which is where "sparkle" comes from. Your Strats, Telecasters, Rickenbackers, Danelectros, etc or generally whatever has a single-coil neck pickup is best. Even a humbucker with a coil-cut switch will help. And if you have a strat-style pickup setup you can get the out of phase "in-between" setup where the middle pickup and neck pickup work togather but out of phase which reduces hum without loosing as much top.

If you're stuck with a neck-position humbucker, try turning the guitar's volume knob all the way down, and then back up just a tiny little bit- you'll find that many volume pots get thin and tinkley at this setting but that's not bad for a clean sound. You'll need to dial in lots of gain with the preamp to compensate, though- but i've done this in a pinch and it works better than you might think. Not as good on some guitars as others though!

Don't expect the ART gear to give you "shimmer" or "sparkle". Won't happen. The ART stuff sounds dark and warm, a sound unto itself. I have an Aphex 107 which is more "sparkle-y". The trick to getting a good clean sound out of the ART tube gear is not to expect to get any distortion out of it. If you seriously load the ART pre's they distort pretty unmusically, but you can crank them pretty good (without overloading) and still get an OK clean sound.

It's unlikely you're going to get credible clean sounds (unless you're going for thin and processed) from anything that doesn't have a tube in it. There's a place for thin and processed, too; so don't chuck your Korg or your Rockman just yet!!

I have never heard a direct sound that I thought was any better than half as good as a mic'ed sound. Distortion IMHO exposes a direct sound's flaws more so than does clean. I have never had trouble getting a good clean sound direct. But if you want even the slightest bit of overdrive with your clean, you're going to have more problems. The semi-distorted stuff seems to suffer more recorded direct than does the super-overdriven stuff.

Putting a super-nice tube in the ART compressor won't likely help, if it makes ANY difference at all. I think they have Groove Tubes in them anyway.

Higher compression levels will rob you of "sparkle".

I can't think of anything else off the top of my head unless you want to mic a cab. Remember that micing a cab for clean isn't as LOUD as micing a cab for crunch. You might even get away with it in an apartment, so long as it's pretty quiet in the room to begin with.

Also bear in mind that there may be a few other things at play here: generally speaking cheap cables rob high end, also compression algorythyms of certian digital multitrackers which allow them to record a long time without using much storage. Even recording digitally at 44.1 ~could~ cause you some problems becasue the highest frequency you can record is 22,500 hz.- outside of what i'd hear in the "sparkle" but maybe a few "golden ears" can hear a difference. And, some A-D convertors don't handle high end as well as others although this isn't as likely.

Out of curiousity, how does the guitar sound plugged right into the board??

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