Problems recording with my tele! Help!

[Blue Furry Monster]

ok, so it's not a five-alarm fire.

i started recording a record with my (indie pop) band today -- we're at a cool little studio going to 16 track 2-inch analog. the problem i'm having is that my tele (2000 am fat tele) just doesn't sound as full and rich on the tape as it does to my ears. i play mostly clean through a '78 vibrolux reverb and it sounds great in the room but isn't transferring quite as well to the tape. we're using a pretty nice warm sounding mic through a telefunken (?) tube preamp so you'd think things would be sounding darn good. the crunch is there but not the warmth.

does anyone who has experience with recording teles have any advice on how to fatten up the sound? thanks so much!

BFM

[dawin12]

Hey Grover,

I have a recording engineering background, regretfully with not enough real studio experience, but I have a couple of suggestions which might yield better results. Don't be afraid to ask the engineer to try a couple of different mics. That's what he's there for - to try to give you the sound you and/or your producer are looking for. Let me guess - he's using a Shure SM-57 a millimeter away from the amp(industry standard). You could try using a nice organic-sounding mic like the Shure SM-7(the Robin Quivers mic). And you could ask that the mic be moved to maybe a foot away from the amp. When it's jammed right up on the front of the amp, it's not "hearing" what you're hearing. It's picking up whatever freakazoid sound is coming from that part of the flapping speaker cone(usually where the dustcap meets the cone). Moving the mic away allows it to pick up the sound of the whole amp. The different sounds that you'd hear close up on different parts of the speaker cone are allowed to blend naturally in the airspace between the amp and the mic. Since the studio is a more controlled environment, sound leakage should not be a problem with the mic a foot away, and amp output certainly ain't a problem. Can't argue with the Telefunken and 16 track 2" - awesome. Gotta love tubes.

[Nick Fanis]

I've produced a few records and most of the times the biggest problems when it comes to guitar sounds are caused by the wrong mike and wrong mike placement.There are no given rules (except from the obvious like placing a mike dead center in front of a speaker when close miking which will produce a harsh sound).
Check out if your amp is facing the glass or any other reflecting surfaces,if it does it will cause harshness and some phase cancelation especially if you use a dynamic mic.You can do wonders with a simple sm 57 dynamic mic if you place it 1" from the speaker and between the center and the rim of the speaker,the closer to the floor you place it the more bass you'll get.

I love placing a condeser mic together with a dynamic if time allows,tell your engineer if he has time (or channels) to either place it BEHIND the amp if it is an open back combo or 3 feet in front of the amp (carefull for phase cancelation again) you can also place it near the dynamic mic and off axis (check w/ your engineer again)

hope this helped

[Poppatwang]

He nailed it.

[gtrjones]

another assenting voice w/ brother Nick - two mics, one right up on the cone, and one to hear the amp workin the room... blend to taste, watch for phasing...

[KC]

all good advice so far. also, you might try hunting down a smaller amp -- a vibrolux is a pretty hefty amp for recording, switching down to a pro junior or blues junior or princeton will make the amp work a little harder and warm things up. what sounds great in the room may just not record well -- some combinations do and some just don't. switch around, experiment.

one other suggestion, from the gearslutz forum, is to play your part through your amp and have somebody (with earplugs) circle around your amp, holding the mic at various angles & various distances until you find the sound you're looking for. good luck.

[Blue Furry Monster]

wow! great advice folks -- we'll give it a shot today and i'll report on what happens.

re: the amp -- i also have a little SF vibrochamp that i brought with me so i may try that and see if it fares better than my beloved vibrolux...

thanks again!
BFM

[Slim]

Telefunken tube preamps sound terrific, but I would venture to guess that the sound you are looking for would better be attained through a transformered Neve pre. Just because something has tubes doesn't necessarily mean it'll be warm. More than likely, %90 of all recorded rock guitar of the last 25 years was tracked with Neve.

It's possible that the engineer has a couple of Neves, so just ask him to try it out with an SM-7 as Dawin suggested, or an SM-57 will do wonders, as the others have stated. Be careful if you ask, because those engineer guys can get pretty touchy about people telling them what's up! :)

[Nick Fanis]

Yup I totally agree NOTHING beats a Neve pre.I have "stolen" from a friend (well permanent lent since he refuses to sell it to me!) an eight ch. 1972 Neve mix that I use all the time as a mic pre amp.It does wonders w/ vocals and guitars.

[Andy R]

Another aspect you may want to consider is simply EQing your amp. The sound radiating straight out from the speaker is usually considerably brighter than what you hear standing above it. If you're going for cleanish sounds the vibrolux should work just fine, ( I use mine in the studio all the time) just play it at the level you usually do.

[leester]

I agree with the posts above in regards to mic selection, mic placement, and double mics. All of those are going to make a HUGE difference.

The smaller amp is a good suggestion too, since they'll hit the sweet spot sooner than a larger one will.

The only thing I think not mentioned so far is that the sound you hear when the guitar track is solo'd may very well sound like crap in the mix. An experienced engineer will know what he needs to get to tape so that it sounds like it should within the full mix.

I'm probably as picky as you are (aren't we all) when it comes to tone. Doing my own recording, I find it hard to ignore the solo'd sound, even though it really doesn't matter as much as the mixed sound does.

The 'fatness & warmth' you're missing is likely coming from where you typically stand in relation to the amp being different from where the mic is placed, AND different from where your audience is sitting. It's a possiblity that you're just now hearing what it sounds like 'out there' in the audience. =)

Something else that might help him/her get the tone you're after; take along a CD or two that sound like what you're personally trying to achieve tone-wise.

If the engineer is experienced, and is comfortable with what's been recorded, then the finished product should make you happy too. So try not to sweat the solo tracks too much.

lees

[gtrjones]

Leester makes an excellent point that hadn't been said before... it's not so much how your guitar tracks sound by themselves, as how they fit in the mix with the rest of the band... most of the time, solo tracks don't sound as full as they could, just so everything else fits together...

something else you might try... if you're not running that vibrolux loud, and it sounds thin, if I remember right, the vibrochamp has a 4 ohm speaker, and the vibrolux 2x10 is a 4 ohm load too... so, run the vibrochamp through the vibrolux cab (I do this sometimes w/ my champ... it really helps the champ sound BIG, and I don't have to turn the vibrolux up to 7 to get that big sound...)

[Skydog]

Add a second mic 5' away.

[Silverface]

To fatten it up a second mic at 5-6' from the amp will really thicken the sound.

But....

Think about this for a second. When playing live you may like a thick sound, but when recording it may seriously muddy up the mix.

Some folks on another forum were discussing this today - as an example, the new Led Zep CD and DVD releases sound huge...but if you really listen to the guitar, it's recorded very thin! Page is a genius - the guitar cuts through the mix and the drums/bass have plenty of tonal space to fill out the sound - mainly the drums have the "big" sound. But the technique makes perfect sense - "fat" guitar sounds good when you isolate the track...but it may not work well in the whole recording project context.

Food for thought.

[Slim]

Mic placement is definitely important, and there is tons of good advice here. I would just like to add that getting a particular tone in the studio, in this case a warm tone as opposed to a 'crunch', is a two way street; the engineer and the performer have to meet half way. Blue Furry has a great guitar and amp, but I really don't think that those preamps are particularily noted for adding warmth to guitar. Recording gear is just as important as a great sounding amp in getting a classic, familiar sound, and there are equivilents to such heralded instruments as Tele's and Twin Reverbs like Elam 251 microphones and Neve 1073 preamps, for example. But certain mics and gear just don't yield the same sonic characteristic as others, just as guitars and amps differ. Most solid state preamps, believe it or not, are warmer in the recording realm, and that's where you get your sound.

I'm not trying to sound like a know-it-all because I certainly don't, it's just that there's only so much the guitarist can do for achieving certain sonics in the studio. Just play the best you can, hope your man behind the desk has good ears, and have fun.

[Blue Furry Monster]

amazingly great advice from everyone -- many many thanks!

so we finished doing basic tracks yesterday -- had to buy a third reel (man, tape is expensive! $160+tax for 32 minutes -- at 15ips -- of analog loveliness).

on one of the songs, my bandmate's reverend slingshot through a champ just clobbers my tele, so i ended up actually doubling my track -- one pass with the vibrolux and the other with the champ. i was really trying to go for that "learning to crawl" sound but didn't quite get there -- i wonder what tricks they used on that record to get the teles so sparkly and yet so *there*.

one of the interesting things that i noticed is that i've always felt that the humbucker on my tele is a little boomy sounding, but on tape it loses a lot of the woof, which was actually good for one song.

when we were originally deciding which studio to use, we were weighing the pro's and con's of going analog vs. digital, and i think everyone in the band is pretty convinced that the analog really just sounds...better somehow. i know there are a million other variables -- different room, different mics, the fact that we were able to track all four of us live at the same time -- but somehow everything (esp. the drums) just sounded more solid, less harsh than the protools tracks we had recorded as demos.

all in all, the sessions went well, so now it's onto overdubs!

thanks again everyone!

BFM

[Skydog]

Whats "learning to crawl" ?

[Blue Furry Monster]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Whats "learning to crawl" ?

The Pretenders' 3rd LP... :D

[Skydog]

Oh .. (I'm not familiar with them). Do remember that one Chaingang song .. sounded like Twin with chorus effect.