Good guitar distortion and tone for recording......HELP ME!!

Lately i've been considering buying a new guitar head to record with because my current one just isn't cutting it. I've been toying around with a Marshall JCM 2000 which has pretty good distortion and superb clean tone and a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier that has excellent distortion and pretty descent clean tone. I've been leaning more toward the Boogie because the distortion is like no other for the type of music I play which is gothic oriented metal that can be compared to the likes of Tool, A Perfect Circle, Lacuna Coil, Unearth, and Moonspell. I would just like to get some recommendations that will possibly help me make up my mind because both heads are great but it's almost like choosing a favorite child. Also if there are any other companies that you can recommend or maybe other distortion recording alternatives than please let me know!

 

Get a Boogie or a Bogner!!! If you can find a Marshall JCM 800 I'd also advise on that. The problem with the JCM 800 IMO is that you have to crank it to get the sound out of it. With a Boogie you don't have to do so much cranking...just make sure the tubes are warm before tracking. If you want to hear a multi-amp JCM 800/Boogie Single Rectifier....I'm finishing up the mix on my old band that I just recorded. I can make a link to a rough mix of what we are doing.

 

Oh....If you like Unearth then go with a Bogner!

 

Have you checked out http://www.guitargeek.com ? It lists a ton of peoples guitar rigs. Do a search for your favorite guitarist and find out what they used.

 

Most producers of guitar heavy recordings will use multi amp set ups with a splitter, to direct the signal to several amps at once ... then they mic each amp to its own track(s), so at mix they can pull lows from one amp, mids from another and highs from another etc. .. this is a very common approach, as is re amping and then re-recording tracks and panning them left / right for "spread".

You can also copy the track or mult it (if you're in analog-land) and then compress the sh*t out of the second channel and mix that back in, along with the uncompressed channel ... These things can make a guitar sound HUGE!

Let your imagination run wild, improvise and do what ever sounds good to you ... ask yourself if there is anything you can do to improve the sound, to get it to where you want it to be ..

 

hey kurt (or anyone) can you name a few splitters you think are good? do those splitters degrade the source sound?

 

The Radial comes to mind ... David Littles (Littlelabs) splitter is great too ...

 

thks kurt

i'm thinking of buying one splitter!
my band has one fender frontman and one hot rod deluxe and i'd like to be able to record guitars from that two amps and then choose which one to use during the song or mix them both...
just have to find a way we can play the amps without much bleading

 

Alot of Boogies have slave out's so if your short on coins after buying that Dual Rectifier you can always drive another amp as a slave and save your money for a good splitter like Kurt mentioned.
Just don't buy a cheap splitter as the sound can get degraded but a good one will allow multiple amps without any degradation in sound quality.

 

It sounds like its a Switcher you need , Skrydstrup and Axess elec makes good stuff.

 

thks for the reply but nop! i want to split my guitar signal to different amps!

 

Nothing like an 80's JCM800, I own two!!!

 

The Diezel amps and cabs are f'n amazing.......silky distortion.....

 

Hey,

have you tried switching the boogie to and from silicon diodes and Vac tubes, different sounds, you may see that one works better for recording situations.

I have a mate who has the same amps as you, he records them both at the same time and uses both sounds when mixing, he says it sounds great.


sammyg

 

Pardon me, but I have a dumb question.

A few people mention tone, recording low end from one amp, mids from one and highs from another, etc etc. I can imagine that this is all important for a good sounding guitar, but what I don't understand is how to get that "tone" to come across if you are using a HPF so things don't get muddy.

If using a HPF on guitars, aren't they going to just sound all midrangy anyway? Sorry, I just don't understand how to make it fit in the mix while still having a great tone. Maybe where I'm wrong is that assuming tone=broad range of frequencies.

Tom

 

Yeah, Not too bad for a $6500 guitar head

 

Tom ...in answer to your question...this multi-amping thing is generally accomplished by NOT limiting the bandwidth coming in, but by the individual characteristics of the separate rigs themselves.

AND I'd also like to point out(to all you amplifier freaks) that the CABINET will create MORE of a tonal variety than a lot of these heads being driven into stratospheric distortion figures...Everybody talks about the heads and few talk about the cab.

I've got a very old Dallas-Arbitter 4-12 in the studio.(this is pre-sound city) It sounds GREAT with any head and remains true to every type of input it recieves...ie. if its clean and sweet- it delivers...loud and crunchy-no prob....the bejeezus distorted out of it-tight and all there...bass played quietly with an old Ampeg B15...unreal...

So, hunt for a CABINET you can trust...they're cheaper.

ps. you still need "That Amp Head", but the search gets easier with the right cabinet.

One of my partners in "The Spitboys" is currently building extension cabinets that have a vibe for sound as well as a 50 watt amp built in that runs off of the speaker outputs....thus all the harmonic distortion and both the pre and the power amp section will be represented at the next speaker in-line...dove-tailed pinewood boxes the size of a tweed deluxe and all the attitude and tone a floating baffle can produce...PM me for details...

 

Hi Davedog,

Thanks for your reply. What you say certainly makes sense, but it wasn't my entire question really. I was just using the 3 amps on separate tracks as an example.

Lets say we stick an SM-57 in front of an original 1965 Fender Princeton blackface, and play an original American 1973 Fender Telecaster Custom through it. This one setup my band uses... and let me tell you, what a tone. Lots of good lows, nice mids, and great highs. (it is a Tele after all)

What I gained from reading on this site is that to make this nice, full sounding track "fit" in the mix and not make everything sound muddy, is to use a high pass filter on it and make it sit in a certain range of frequencies. Roll off the lows, etc.

When you do this, is that in essence taking your great guitar tone away? Doesn't the guitar just sound all midrangy now? I'm sorry, I'm new at this and I don't really understand how this works.

Tom

 

Look at the JCM SLASH head

I wandered into one of these and I'll never look back. Has the mids the mesa dont. It has enough grit to stay on top and well its, IMHO one of the best amps ever. Its a Jubilee modded.

 

The best amp for me is the Soldano Decatone... I running that through my mesa recto cab... :lol: just awesome...

-Kevin