Journal blinder's Journal: Guitars, Slowing Down and Finding My Feet 18
with the launch of last week done, and the dust settling, and the money. holy crap, the money this site has raised in the less than a week its been live just staggers me. its gratifying in a lot of ways that i designed a stable system that has had to cope with a lot of external forces, and has come out like a champ each time.
i've been getting home before 8pm most nights now, and even got home last night around 6pm, enough time to hit the gym. finding my feet again at the gym was weird. i hadn't visited the gym in well over a month and smartly, i took it easy. did about 2.6 miles in 25 minutes.
what's also nice is being able to spend more time with solemn. its been tough on us both. my anxiety levels have been nearly red-lining for the last month or so, so when i have been home, its usually in a hyper-aware state, or completely crashed. my therapist (who is a psychiatric nurse) prescribed rozerem to help me shut down faster and therefore enable me to get much better sleep, which, we believe, was fueling or making my anxiety much worse. we haven't ruled out anti-anxiety meds yet.
its discouraging for me because in the past i could have easily handled the last two months and come out without a ding or a scratch. but my therapist and solemn remind me is that i've got a lot more on my plate now, and the mental and physical stress has a much more significant effect now than it ever would have in the past.
hmph. i still don't have to like it (for obvious reasons).
anyway, with some of the time i've been getting back, i've actually been able to pick up my guitar again as well. and this leads us to the music/guitar/gear-nerd portion of this journal.
as many of you know i rail against fake/modeled guitar tones (ala pod, and the likes) and as much as i like guitar rig 2, the overdriven/distortion tone are all so very fizzy, inarticulate and absolutely useless. guitar rig 2's rectifier does come close in some instances, but fails miserably once you start mixing it with other instruments.
well, through some tinkering about, i have come up with, what i think, is a damn fine solution for those who want *real* natural sounding tube distortion, without the whole being arrested or evicted (for those that don't know, the ideal tone one gets from an overdriven amp is when the tubes are pushed pretty hard and are running quite hot, and that is achieved by more power, thus more volume).
so, anyway i have a marshall jcm2000 head. probably the finest modern marshall head they've ever produced (basically a jcm800 with a second channel). the jcm800 is probably the best head marshall has ever produced.
well, i ran the speaker line out from the head into an attenuator (don't do this at home boys and girls unless you know exactly what the ohm-age of your amp is, or you will destroy your amp). i then ran the line-out of the attenuator into a tube-powered mic pre-amp. i then ran that line into pro tools, which i then routed that signal into guitar rig 2. i setup a very simple setup in guitar rig 2, i created a simple 4x12 cabinet (british model), "mic'd" it with a neumann u87, off axis. added the tube compressor and +5 gain modules, messed with a graphic EQ (only very slightly) and got a really decent tone. very "large" and "warm." very present without the usual harshness or fuzziness of other amp simulators (mostly because i'm not simulating an amp, i'm using the real thing).
i basically cranked the jcm2000, so the tubes were very very warm. i didn't get a chance to record anything with it yet, but so far i think its quite usable.
the biggest trap guitarists fall into is not actually knowing how a good guitar tone is captured. most think that what you hear from your amp is what shows up on tape. this of course is completely absurd. those that don't understand this will never have a good recorded guitar tone. that's why i usually laugh to myself when i hear a recording and the guitar is all fuzzy and inarticulate, its a very basic lack of understanding of how recording works. the idea is to back off on gain, push more power, back way the hell off of high-frequencies, and lean on the mid-low frequencies (or mid-range). using this exact thought process and bringing it into a fusion of modeled guitar tone (in my case modeling the cabinet and mic ONLY) and using a real amp (through an attenuator) can the apartment-close-quarters-friendly guitarist achieve yummy tone without totally faking it.
you linked wikipedia? (Score:2)
(*hugs you*)
Yeah, your anxiety's been scary. And i'm very proud of you that you finally closed your computer friday night and didn't work from home all weekend. I think it did you good.
It's been taking a serious toll on your health and i'm very happy to see you taking it easy again.
I would like to go on record as having known what you were doing with the amp, and apply it towards my band scouts merit badge
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hmmm (Score:2)
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What about... (Score:2)
Couldn't those do you dirtywork and not wreck your amp?
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Wreck the amp? But, but, but... a tube is designed to be overdriven. If you weren't going to overdrive it, you might as well have just stuck with transistors.
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if you plugged a mismatched attenuator into your amp head, switched it on "load" (as i have) and then a few minutes in wonder why your tubes have all went bye-bye, well, that's one way to figure out how mismatched load can really wreck things
*psst* (Score:2)
Sincerely,
The Helpfulness Department
Only one problem with attenuators (Score:2)
But maybe you can do that in software.
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i've worked in enough recording studios to know, quite well, that things like air, materials, distance and position is what is key to achieving desirable tones (on tape). guitar rig 2 fails at simulating the amp portion of the equation, but does pretty well with the simulating air, mics, position and distance.
i just wish they would add a ribbo