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I want a good mic and/or pre that will give me a dirty saturated color. I am not looking for anything clean just something for heavy rock/metal/hardcore with lots of screaming and try on a drum room mic. I hear a lot of good screaming from bands and i don't know what they used to get that sound.

I want something that is not clean, If it means a nice tube pre, saturating the tube, and an sm57/421 so be it, I just want to know how to get those sounds.

Bobbo

Comments

bobbo Thu, 12/23/2004 - 18:12

re; what kind of screaming

to list some bands:

Glassjaw
Thrice
Dillinger escape plan
Converge
Slipknot (self titled cd sound)
The Bled

I am wanting to get that "kind" of sound, I don't know if i would be able to contact the studios they recorded at to get a tracking sheet with a list of all pre's, comps, eq, mics that were used on tracking and mixdown.

thanks
bobbo

anonymous Fri, 12/24/2004 - 20:18

hmmm... I'm not an expert at recording but my company does manufacture high quality mic pres, so here's my advice. That dirty hardcore/rock sound is just from overloading a signal and causing distortion. You can do that many ways with very cheap equiptment that has little headroom, probebly the cheaper the better... Just crank the gain stage and turn down the level. Or if you don't have a gain stage then use a limiter or compressor... I don't think a tube pre would work well becuase if it's a nice tube mic pre it will be hard to saturate/overlaod a tube.

Sebatron Fri, 12/24/2004 - 21:42

You can do that many ways with very cheap equiptment that has little headroom, probebly the cheaper the better

Yes true ,, but it will be VERY noisey.
Less headroom may clip or ' distort ' easier but you'll get all the underlying garbage ( noise ) being amplified as well.
.... and of course if you decide to add a delay or verb to it , that will only multiply the crap hiss ....

I don't think a tube pre would work well becuase if it's a nice tube mic pre it will be hard to saturate/overlaod a tube.

A nice tube pre should be like an instrument and be flexible enough to do this...choose one with good high tension rails... :wink:
Try linking a couple of channels together and experiment with different drive levels.
Remember the tube distortion is ' rounder ' than its solid state counterpart and some consider its distortion region part of the dynamic range of the tube.
Therefore being a quieter signal you should be able to compress/limit your vocal more for that ' in-yer-face ' sound without noisefloor problems..... even a bit of noise can ruin the depth of field of a recording.