Real Amps Cranked - New Blog

[Chris Townsend]

From time to time we get various discussions on the DUC about ghost notes, swirl, speaker breakup or other aspects of amp tone, so I wrote a blog with a number of audio examples of real amps to provide a little bit more of a reference point. You know how they say, a wave file is worth a thousand words.

http://community.avid.com/blogs/avid...s-cranked.aspx

[derker]

Very good and informative blog! Theres a lot to be said about an isolated cranked up amp, and the clips said pretty much everything. Thanks!

[BCnSTL]

Very cool. Thank you!

It's great to hear a fairly definitive example of 'ghost notes' - I thought that's what they were, I now I know for sure!

[AvidEditor]

Hi Chris,

That's really great, thanks. What guitar, pickups and pickup position(s) were used?

[TieDyedDevil]

Thank you!

[Chris Townsend]

I think a variety of guitars were used. The guitars were chosen to match the style being played (Strats for the SRV/Hendrix-ish stuff, etc). Not sure about pickup positions.

And I should mention that the mic used on all clips was an SM7.

[jvstrat]

Nice to see you back on hear Chris. Hope you guys are back to working on some eleven rack stuff. Loading impulses would be awesome.

[Benoni]

Thanks for doing this Chris

You are 100% right, its all about context in the mix. I think alot of people would be surprised at what a raw guitar track that is used on a commercial release really sounds like solo'd and without any other processing (eq, dynamics, ect...)

[xy44]

now that is the sounds im so used to..
Shame 11R cant do that though...(or any modeller)
Unfortunatly becasue amp breakup is all natrual and unjustified, if its moddeld it needs allgorythms, and that means its digital, and digital means its going to sound fake, and therfore it does.!

One day, maybe in the next 5 years or so we can get true representation of tones. - but for now, they are all convienient (modellers).

I work with real amps in this way every day in my studio, and we have tried 11R, axefx, Kemper if the client wants choice.. can get close, but never ever the same...

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by Benoni

Thanks for doing this Chris

You are 100% right, its all about context in the mix. I think alot of people would be surprised at what a raw guitar track that is used on a commercial release really sounds like solo'd and without any other processing (eq, dynamics, ect...)

i wish i had pictures from a record i worked on for atlantic a few years back. 5-4x12 cabs and a 2x12. 5 of them being fed from various marshalls and the other from a matchless. the split was with a radial jd-7. gobo's between each cab and 5-8 microphones on each with also some scattered out room mics.

it was hell to keep track of and if i needed to tweak 1 mic it was a bit awkward to find that "1" mic. we went through all of this to find the best couple mics on each cab then down to the best couple cabs! but in reality a lot of the albums i have worked on have really good sounding gtr tracks from the get go and dont do anything crazy w them in the mix in most cases.

some engineers like CLA are known for tweaking stuff to the point it does not sound right on its own, but most of the time w guitars i find the most surprising is the low end roll off in a mix.