Recording with an amp?

[shadfan4]

I have reduced my amp collection now down to three.

(The Vox AC15CC1x (Blue) is for sale) I do use my luverly AC15 Heritage Tv1 but to get the best out of any tube amp it needs to be driven hard, unfortunately the AC15 has a very efficient speaker and even living in a detached house it is VERY loud and would annoy the neighbors as well.

The problem I have and would like to know how others deal with the problem, is that to record with the amp somewhere near 11 on the dial, I can't hear the bl**dy BT through my cans. I know a solution is to put the amp in an isolation box but they are big, and not practical in my small studio. Another is to use a "power-soak" but I don't believe they give the same effect as the amp driving the speaker.

I have tried and sold an AC4 but that ran out of headroom so quickly I didn't like the distortion it produced.

I have tried putting the amp in another room (when the house is empty) and using long mic leads and guitar leads tried with some small success, but again not practical to shift amps/mics/stands around.

In summary, do you play your amps full on and how do you hear what's going on in the BT?

Mike.

[jetblack69]

Hi Mike,

fortunately I dont have a problem practising with my JMI AC 30,I live in a virtual detached house........and I have great neighbours,who like to listen to me playing.

I have a 25watt fender amp which I feed with backing tracks from my laptop.

Steve

[shadfan4]

which I feed with backing tracks from my laptop.

Unfortunately that method works for a "perfomance" or just live practicing, but not for recording and makes the BT mono, and I should think not sounding right, as guitar amps are not designed to play all those frequency's of a BT.

Mike.

[jetblack69]

Mike,

a lot of the Shads LP,s that i have are MONO,and sound fantastic through a good Hi-fi.

Your not easily going to achieve (studio) quality playing/recording at home, unless you have some good equipment.

One way of doing it,for recording, is feed the signal of your backing track into the low-gain channel on your VOX,and play along with the BT your guitar,volume and backing track,volume can be adjusted on your amp......mic up as normal.Don't think you will notice much loss in frequency response on a backing track.

Anyway,on the finished recording,with some great software like cool-edit or Adobe Audition you could put back any top,mid,or bottom frequencies with a bit of clever EQ,ing etc.

Steve

Steve

[shadfan4]

Steve, I think you have missed the point of my post, (probably because I didn't explain properly)

I do have a lot of of very good equipment in my dedicated studio, as hopefully some of my posts show, I was making the point that if I use my amp to record with instead of through my POD XT PRO or software amp sims the volume of the amp if turned up loud enough to get a good sound is so loud I can't hear the BT through my Senheissser HD650 headphones.

As I don't want to damage my hearing anymore I can't crank up the headphone volume to a level that matches the amp. I do not play BT's through any amp/speakers just from the PC through the Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 via my Soundcraft Spirit mixer.

I do know that a lot of Shads tunes are in mono from the early days but playing BT's through a guitar amp isn't going to sound too good whether mono or stereo.

Mike.

[fenderplucker]

Hi Mike,

I have a medium size walk-in robe off the main bedroom that is stuffed full of my wife's dresses etc. (and I get one corner for a couple of jumpers and pairs of trousers!). With all that sound absorbing material it is acoustically quite dead. I put the amp in there with an SM57 or AKG C414 mic and shut the bedroom door and heavy curtains. All my recording equipment is in my study that is next to the bedroom and can hardly hear any direct sound (the house is solid brick). I can then play the guitar in the study listening to it and backing track through the monitors while recording.

The results are on the jukebox on the TVS web site.

Regards,

paul.

[abstamaria]

Mike, you will probably have to create an acoustically correct home recording studio. That sounds expensive. Or find something similar to Paul's (whose recordings are superb).

Andy

PS: So that's how you do it, Paul!

[Tone]

Hi Mike

I have a Vox AC15 Heritage which I use for recording with a SM57 mic and I've got round the volume problem to some degree by having a master volume control fitted (by our own Amanda) so I can play at lower volumes but still retain the characteristics of the speaker.

I then found that at reasonable volume levels the signal from the mic wasn't strong enough to give a satisfactory input level on the recorder but I solved that by running the mic into a Behringer mixer, increasing the output on that and then taking it directly into the recorder. I do, in fact, use two SM57s connected to separate channels on the mixer and recorder and blend them together.

This method keeps the neighbours happy and also means that I have no problem hearing the BT through the headphones.

Cheers.

Tony

[shadfan4]

Paul, I think your solution would be mine if 'er indoors wardrobe wasn't the opposite side of the house from my studio.

I am experimenting with recording the AC15 with an SM57 at a low enough volume and on another track in Cubase 5 my Line6 Pod Xt Pro also with a dry signal and software sim like Amplitube on another instead of the pod to see how these combinations sound.

ps: you have some great tracks on the jukebox.

Andy, a properly treated room would be ideal, but unfortunately it is not practical in my room, having said that the ambient recorded sound isn't exactly "Abbey Road" but for my recordings OK.

Tony, my Focusrite Pro 40 has excellent pre-amps and there is more than enough gain for my SM57. I have used two AKG C1000s mics (one at the cone another about 18" to pick up some "air") and had ok results.

Mike.