DIs of 11 popular BKPs for reamping

[AndyR]

For some reason I suspect reamping capability is going to be far more prevelent among the metallers...

Why I have that impression I have no idea, but us of a heavier inclination are clearly the best test group

/Musical techno-bigotry :lol:

:lol:

Interesting you say that. I tried it a bit a while back, and decided that while the results were very interesting (taught me a lot about choosing amp models and settings) it wasn't actually worth the effort for a guitar part while I'm recording a song. At the time I was wondering what you guys were getting out of it.

But I'm not a metaller (or I'm old-skool "metal" at the most), and hadn't really understood what modern metallers are actually after...

And then I read some threads on here a little while ago, and I heard some clips, that suddenly made me realise how important this could be for you guys. As a blues/pop/rockster, I'm after a decent performance with a usable sound for the rest of the mix. Obviously you guys are after the same thing, but I realised I've got a lot more leeway on the last bit. So when I tried reamping I tended to just get "oh that's interesting" (or possibly amusing), and that's why I ended up thinking it's not worth the effort/distraction for me - I usually ended up using the amp model I was tracking with originally (reasoning that that's the one that gave me the emotion I put into it in the first place...)

But reading one of those threads - can't remember which it was - I finally understood that for you metal guys the right amp, amp settings, mic etc, seems a lot more mission-critical. For what I do, once I'm in the right ball-park, I can probably use 90-95% of my options - even "cr@p" guitar sounds can be good/usable. For you guys the percentage must be a lot smaller - anything weedy, muddy, etc, is gonna be a track-killer.  When there's that much hanging on the decisions, yeah, the ability to concentrate on the part and then get the sound right later starts to sound a lot more attractive. Twas very interesting to finally figure out why you guys might be so interested in it.

Like Philly, I'd never thought about it being used for commercial live recordings. But it does indeed make sense - if I was a pro recording my gigs for a possible release then, even as a non-metaller, I'd take the option of recording a safety DI feed from my guitar. Who knows what might be happening in the room, with the mics, etc, during the performance. You might get the whole gig down, perfect guitaring, and when you listen back the mic'd track is just unusable. The ability to feed the original performance back through a bashed up old AC30 or something in the safety of a studio seems eminently sensible (not sure what the "purists" might think, and I might not want to advertise it on the CD sleeve! :lol:)


Anyway, nice one Nolly - as you can guess, I ain't gonna be using them meself :lol: - but I can definitely see how they'll help others.

[Philly Q]

Like Philly, I'd never thought about it being used for commercial live recordings. But it does indeed make sense - if I was a pro recording my gigs for a possible release then, even as a non-metaller, I'd take the option of recording a safety DI feed from my guitar. Who knows what might be happening in the room, with the mics, etc, during the performance. You might get the whole gig down, perfect guitaring, and when you listen back the mic'd track is just unusable. The ability to feed the original performance back through a bashed up old AC30 or something in the safety of a studio seems eminently sensible (not sure what the "purists" might think, and I might not want to advertise it on the CD sleeve! :lol:)

I'm a semi-purist - all those "it was recorded on a 1950s analog desk and nothing in the studio was less than 50 years old, including the engineer" stories get a bit tedious, but you can't beat the sound of real people playing in a real room all at the same time (perhaps only for certain types of music, granted).  And I was always a bit distressed by those stories of favourite live albums being largely "live in the studio" (although they remain favourites  :lol: ). 

But we all know the sound at a gig can be imperfect, often for reasons beyond the band's control.  Re-amping a DI track is definitely cheating a bit, but at least it's still the original performance.   Once it starts going deeper into cut-and-paste, pitch-correction territory I'd be less happy.

[AndyR]

Once it starts going deeper into cut-and-paste, pitch-correction territory I'd be less happy.

But you'll never know unless they print it on the sleeve :lol:

(Or the engineer "tweets" it or or something... Imagine the headlines, "Johnny Fast Shred named in engineer super-gagging scandal")

Once you decide to re-amp the live DI, all bets are off, you can overdub and replace bum-notes, badly selected frets on rhythm parts, guitar lead problem, etc, etc,  absolutely seamlessly.

[Philly Q]

Once you decide to re-amp the live DI, all bets are off, you can overdub and replace bum-notes, badly selected frets on rhythm parts, guitar lead problem, etc, etc,  absolutely seamlessly.

Yep, which is undoubtedly what happens.

Oh well, what I don't know can't hurst me.

[Isa]

This is an awesome comparison as DI always feels so alien to me, its a good way to judge how (insert word) a pickup is without the sweet amplifiers that you guys have influencing the sound. Of course preamp has an effect and guitar, most obviously, but it is one of the purer samples of the signal: so thanks!

[MDV]

For some reason I suspect reamping capability is going to be far more prevelent among the metallers...

Why I have that impression I have no idea, but us of a heavier inclination are clearly the best test group

/Musical techno-bigotry :lol:

:lol:

Interesting you say that. I tried it a bit a while back, and decided that while the results were very interesting (taught me a lot about choosing amp models and settings) it wasn't actually worth the effort for a guitar part while I'm recording a song. At the time I was wondering what you guys were getting out of it.

But I'm not a metaller (or I'm old-skool "metal" at the most), and hadn't really understood what modern metallers are actually after...

And then I read some threads on here a little while ago, and I heard some clips, that suddenly made me realise how important this could be for you guys. As a blues/pop/rockster, I'm after a decent performance with a usable sound for the rest of the mix. Obviously you guys are after the same thing, but I realised I've got a lot more leeway on the last bit. So when I tried reamping I tended to just get "oh that's interesting" (or possibly amusing), and that's why I ended up thinking it's not worth the effort/distraction for me - I usually ended up using the amp model I was tracking with originally (reasoning that that's the one that gave me the emotion I put into it in the first place...)

But reading one of those threads - can't remember which it was - I finally understood that for you metal guys the right amp, amp settings, mic etc, seems a lot more mission-critical. For what I do, once I'm in the right ball-park, I can probably use 90-95% of my options - even "cr@p" guitar sounds can be good/usable. For you guys the percentage must be a lot smaller - anything weedy, muddy, etc, is gonna be a track-killer.  When there's that much hanging on the decisions, yeah, the ability to concentrate on the part and then get the sound right later starts to sound a lot more attractive. Twas very interesting to finally figure out why you guys might be so interested in it.

Like Philly, I'd never thought about it being used for commercial live recordings. But it does indeed make sense - if I was a pro recording my gigs for a possible release then, even as a non-metaller, I'd take the option of recording a safety DI feed from my guitar. Who knows what might be happening in the room, with the mics, etc, during the performance. You might get the whole gig down, perfect guitaring, and when you listen back the mic'd track is just unusable. The ability to feed the original performance back through a bashed up old AC30 or something in the safety of a studio seems eminently sensible (not sure what the "purists" might think, and I might not want to advertise it on the CD sleeve! :lol:)


Anyway, nice one Nolly - as you can guess, I ain't gonna be using them meself :lol: - but I can definitely see how they'll help others.

I think you just gave a pretty good synthesis of the extra appeal/utility and so probably frequency of use of reamping to metally types pretty well :)

Its a common practice in blues, jazz, rock...well, everything else, its a standard capability of any studio worth its salt, no matter what they normally produce, and certainly a £100-200 reamp box is within reach of pretty much any guitarist that wants it....

But, yeah, I think there might be something to do with the unforgivingly high standards for metal sounds, unforgiving nature of constructing metal mixes (especially the guitars, in that they tend to destroy everything else in the mix and need to be dialed in quite counterintuitively) and perhaps the geeky/technical inclinations of the average practitioner of the arcane and treacherous art of metal recordings lead to reamping capability being more common among the metal community.

Mainly it was just an impression I had though, for which I now have explanations :lol:

[rsf1977]

awesome idea!

[Kiichi]

Love the idea...now I just need to figure out how I can do this...

But the clean clips alone are quite interresting for themselfs. To me the Aftermath kicks ass there, though of course that doesn“t mean much.

[Emperoff]

I've been messing around with the clips through my DAW, and surprisingly the Holydiver sounds totally punishing under a lot of gain. Very punchy indeed!

[MerlinTKD]

Wow, I *JUST* found out about these... how is this not stickied??  PDT_010

SOOO helpful just listening to the DI's, you can really hear the characteristics of each pickup, makes the EQ charts on the pickup pages make much more sense. Now, if I can figure out how to re-amp these through my Mustang Floor... :lol:

[Alfi27]

It would be great if these could be reuploaded, and if you could do the same with the classic rock clips that would be even more appreciated!

[McStrummer]

Looks like these have long since gone away 

Are they still available anymore? Love to run a few of these through my favourite models.