Ceramic Nailbomb and "The Aftermath" Custom pickup, remixed old mix removed

[MDV]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3702469/Memento%20Mori.mp3

The track is called memento mori, which if youre unfamiliar with yer medieval catholic dogma means Remember You Must Die (intended to be a cheery ditty about living your life fully since it ends, however, rather than the threat of damntation....anyway, vocalist hasnt finished writing them yet and enough prattling about non-gear stuff)

Its recorded through my powerball with the Legra MDV602 with a c-bomb left and the aurora with "The Aftermath", as I call it right. The aftermath is a pickup that Tim made custom for me thats designed to be exceptionally tight and percussive, with a prominent mid. Its ceramic, tripple magnet, about 15k, dont know the gauge, double screw pole (allen pole actually, but anywho) and is ferociously precise and clear.

There is a little tiny bit of 5 through 6 k increase on the guitars, more on the c-bomb as it doesnt cut as well, and some compression on the 200hz and down on the 602/cbomb because its low end is a little less controlable. Other than that they are untreated.

The cab is my ubercab, the speaker is a V30, the mic is an MD421 pointed more or less at the join between the dust cap and cone, straight and right up against the grill. The cab was shielded from room reflections (small room, 3.5 ish by 4m, nasty reflections) with plywood boards covered in acoustic foam and it fired down a 10m+ arch that joins two rooms because I didnt like the dead sound of a totally closed off cab, and chance would have it that I can arrange it like that in my house.

Drums are sup 2.

Harmonies have an NT1A on them about 5 inches back and off axis, more or less to the centre of the cone and mixed down about 9db. Just to add a bit of different character to seperate them slightly.

Hope you like it.

[Bob Johnson]

That's great; it's so good to hear all that work turned into something tangible. Proof positive that guitar engineering beats fairy dust and voo doo BS every time.

Thanks. :D :D

[Stevepage]

You can hear that the Aftermath is a very grindy pickup. Probably more so than a Painkiller. Sounded pretty cool. The Nailbomb sounded pretty cool too.

[MDV]

That's great; it's so good to hear all that work turned into something tangible. Proof positive that guitar engineering beats fairy dust and voo doo BS every time.

Thanks. :D :D

Very value-neutral statement there bob! :lol: Its not to everyones taste, for sure. I hope that  this gives some idea what I was blathering on about to you for months/years with the 'very heavy, thick, but tight clear and defined' thing though! The recording doesnt capture what I know these guitars are capable of, but its probably my best yet, and I figure the best way to go about audio engineering isnt to make any given attempt the best you possibly can, you just get stuck in endless cycles of iterative improvement of minutia with that and never get anything done: its to do the best you can in reasonable time with each one and always make the next one better. If anyones weird enough they can chart my AE skills progression on this very board and tell me if thats the case or not! (No, I dont recommend anyone do that, or want anyone to! I'm just saying I think that each is better than the previous and I intend to continue like that).

Steve, its got a similar grind to the PK, but I found, just my opinion, that the PK can suffer from some spikiness in the high mids and a little boxiness in general. The Aftermath does not. It breathes more, and is tighter and more precise but less constrained. Superb pickup - well done Tim; he made something very special with this pickup.

[HTH AMPS]

nice work man, can we hear one of the guitar tracks in isolation so we can hear it grinding a little better without the distraction of the drums ????

[MDV]

nice work man, can we hear one of the guitar tracks in isolation so we can hear it grinding a little better without the distraction of the drums ????

Sure I'll do it tomorrow.

[MDV]

AHHH! Forgot.

Anyway, I'll mix down the left, right and both guitars later.

[Ibanez2570z]

Awesome work. Sounded great through some cheapy Sony MDR-XD200 HEAPHONES. Will blast it out later through some different speakers to compare :).

[Stevepage]

That's great; it's so good to hear all that work turned into something tangible. Proof positive that guitar engineering beats fairy dust and voo doo BS every time.

Thanks. :D :D

Steve, its got a similar grind to the PK, but I found, just my opinion, that the PK can suffer from some spikiness in the high mids and a little boxiness in general. The Aftermath does not. It breathes more, and is tighter and more precise but less constrained. Superb pickup - well done Tim; he made something very special with this pickup.

sounds like it could be the sort of thing I'd like in my Carvin. Or even my new Strat.

[MDV]

Cheers craig.

Busy fixing guitars last night (all fenders coming in for electronics and correction of frankly daft factory setups), so never got round to rendering the guitars on their own. Have some work to do on my own guitars tonight (new strings arived!! thats the only problem with newtone; the wait! Couple of nuts I've been putting off doing right too) but I'll see if I can get round to the guitars only bit

[Johnny Mac]

Blimey Mark that sounds brilliant!  :D Great playing too. The two guitars together really sound beefy. I panned the balance back and forth a few times to hear them on their own and they both have some great tones.
Great bit of music, interesting riffs and drums. I liked that part just before there was one drum on its own. Also those harmonys, really nice touch! You have some good ideas!
Did you do any of that frequency slotting at all?

[MDV]

Thanks mate! (and for your comments in the recording thread too!)

I did to an extent, and also tried to use a bit of overlapping to blend things as well. Basically, beacuse of the low tuning, its 20-40ish hz is mainly bass, which is then knotched out from 40 to 80ish for the kick, I swept around with a parametric to find the tonic of the kick, which was in the vicintity of 60 hz, knotched that up, then the guitars start to come up and the balls of them starts to really happen round 100 (bear in mind this is drop A#, so thats about 58hz) and they're blended with a bit more bass round there, the low mids through to about 5k are pretty dominated by the giutars, the snares got a bit more 100ish hz for punch and then its hyped up a lot round 8 to 10k, the ovherads are hyped from 10 up, and the kick has a bit of slap sitting above the main range of the guitars at 5k (one of the problems with this is high extension of the guitars, but I know what I did wrong and next time it will be better) and also has some more body at about 1k, and is pretty scooped between there and about 100 (which may have been a mistake).

On the other hand, the low end of the OH and the top of the guitars are intentionally sitting on each other to a degree to smooth and blend the guitars, and bass and guitars and kick have spaces in the lows and low mids where they are each dominant, but theyre somewhat twisted together into a locked-in whole as well.

[Nolly]

Interesting guitar tones, certainly grindy and tight in the low end. There are some distracting resonances in the upper-midrange that could be carefully EQ'd out without changing the character.
Now you should work on the rest of the mix, the bass guitar and kick drum are barely audible and the rest of the drums lack power. Maybe try foregoing the frequency analysis and trust your ears :)

[MDV]

The frequency analysis was done with my ears ;)

Dont know what you mean about the resonances. The JD10 I used as a (very slight) boost puts a little bit of odd phaseyness in the top end that was hard to minimise (and I found it impossible to EQ out without killing the attack), maybe youre hearing that?

[Tim]

Great tones and great tune MDV - the new Legra with Aftermaths sound wicked ably helped by some excellent playing!