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recording equipment


westhemann

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Have fun and post some songs B).

I like that sentiment, have fun, and it really helps to have a simple, straight forward set up. I like a good laptop because its portable, throw it in the car and go to your freinds house. For software follow the KIS principle.

Get a headphone amp mixer so you and the band can jam together through the cans and record.

You can throw down rough demos with drums using one mic in front of the snare about one foot back and slightly higher, it will pick everything, crap quality but enough to see if the song is turning out good, if it is, re-record the drums with more mics, a cheap 8 track mixer will do the job. Or talk your drummer into getting an electronic kit, these are less than a grand now and you can smash away at 3 in the morning without the police coming around.

For guitars the direct injection technology is so good it's a great alternative to a real amp. That said, an amp and mike in the bathroom makes a great isolation booth and the hard surfaces give a lovey recorded tone.

After you have recorded your song, slap down a rough mix, turn the sound right down until you can hardly hear the music, can you still hear every intrument? If not adjust at this volume and then crank it up. Listen to the song on lots of different systems, often the mix sounds completely different on an iPod as compared to a stereo. Listen to it for a week or two, you will start to hear things you didn't when you first mixed it, usually that the guitar is not loud enough :D

Here is an original song I did in an afternoon using Cakewalk

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Post your tracks but wince as the internet compression makes mush of the highhats :D

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  • 2 weeks later...

If I recall, it's just two XT quality processors isn't it? I have a Bass POD XT Pro in the rack with the X3 Pro, and aside from the full range of amp models (guitar and bass, plus preamps etc.) being available it seems pretty much the same. The Gearbox utility is fantastic, as the Bass POD XT Pro needs a weird little application instead which is disappointing. The blending of two different patches is awesome, for example, to create a massive rhythm crunch for metal I really like using a Bomber Uberschall to support a nice powerful low end blended with something to bring highs and mids through, like a Dual Rectifier or a Powerball.

The X3s all come with all the models as standard I think. Much better than the UX2 Toneport I used to have which I needed to purchase add-ons for.

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  • 12 years later...

Old topic, what's eveyone using nowadays?

I've been a Kemper user since 2012, been pretty much perfect. Created couple hundred profiles of my rackmount Rectifier and Fryette Deliverance, eventually sold all my tube gear. My back thanks me aswell. :D

 

I/O is Lynx E22 card through s/pdif from Kemper to Reaper. Great for home playing/recording, with just one twist of a knob I have my own perfect recorded tone in a box.

Sorry for the gushing ad. 😅

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Wow, old thread but sure, definitely relevant.

I've been using a Line6 Helix floor for a few years. It's consistently simple but sounds great. For my own use, it would make little difference whether I use a Helix, Kemper, Axe-FX, Quad Cortex or whatever. Having an expression pedal built in or the option of an external pedal with a (10k?) pot is a bonus. That makes me think as to whether I could make an optically-switched pedal for the Helix....hmmmm

Softwarewise, Audacity, RipX DeepAudio for figuring out tracks, Cakewalk SONAR and a few old plugins such as Toontrack stuff.

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  • 4 weeks later...

2009 to 2022... that is the godzilla of necro bumps!  bravo!

is a fun topic... everyone loves to talk about gear!

I'm a tube nut and so naturally I have a marshall and a fender - nothing too fancy.  I find it really hard to dial in mics before my inspiration runs out so I don't use those a whole lot anymore... just when I want to blast off.

I'm also a digital nut!  About a year ago took the plunge on an axe fx 3.  It is about as amazing as digital gear gets... but I still have it wired up to several tube power/pre amps.  Sometimes I'm not even sure why as the axe is totally capable of dream tones... but then if x is good... x + 1 is betterer!

have an rme fireface ufx, focusrite liquidfire and saffire into a 16core pc with 64gigs ram and 10 or so ssd.  

I am probably the only guy on earth recording guitar into fruity loops for my daw.  I write all my own (midi) drum/keyboard tracks in the piano roll and honestly flstudio is the best piano roll there is... or um... I've just gotten so used to it I can't stray to anything else.  Have ezdrummer and bfd... but I am also a kontakt nut... and lately have been spending a lot of time re-mapping anaogue drums content to my own scripting. 

And what do I do with all this high powered gear?  I noodle around and I write all sorts of music that only I will ever hear.  About the only time i put anything out there is for guitar-build-demos and backing tracks for 4x4 offroad trips.  I sure do have fun tho!

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I'm still knee-deep in Line6 gear. The Helix floor has been excellent for me for a number of years now. I still find ways to squeeze out some new textures within driven amp models. A particularly fun one was/is a straight JCM800 driven by a TS808 followed by both a Mesa oversize and a standard Mesa 4x12 with different mics and a few tweaks such as parametric EQ afterwards, and finally pitch widening a couple of cents either side for breadth. For whatever reason this makes pinch harmonics absolutely squeal with texture. Kind of like twisting polystyrene.

Don't even get me started on some of my other patches! So much flavour, so few stomps.

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