|
|
Post by GuitarZ on Jan 27, 2022 14:40:32 GMT -7
I've been struggling with a guitar solo sound. My normal tone isn't cutting it.  And, the Mrs wasn't crazy about my previous takes. So, I thought I'd try some different tones to play back for her. It dawned on me, if I could re-amp my guitar, it would be easier and more efficient to play through and/or refine tones. I was able to construct a DIY re-amp set up. It's pretty cool. I'm making adjustments on tone, dirt, speakers (via my Ox), effects, etc on the fly while listening. I can even switch amps (although not on the fly). It feels a bit like I could go down a rabbit hole making endless adjustments. Plus, I'm not sold that I get the same feel vs playing with the actual tone. My thought is if I can get a sound, I'll then do some direct takes with that sound. Does anybody else have any re-amp experience? I'm curious as to whether it's worth it. I'm getting some noise with my DIY setup. I would assume if I would really want to do it, I'd invest in a reamping box. The Radial boxes seem to be pretty popular. Again, it's kind of cool. |
|
|
|
Post by adam on Jan 28, 2022 6:25:41 GMT -7
It's an amazing concept. I have the Radial ProRMP and have used it once. I didn't pay attention to the noise, but it probably adds something. I did notice I had to mess with the gain to try to get it to match my original guitar. Bottom line for me, it's too much extra fooling around. If I was doing serious recording, I would definitely being grabbing the di guitar signal to at least have that mechanism available later.
Everything is a rabbit hole. Just a couple weeks ago I was trying to grab a DI signal from the guitar and the di boxes were adding noise to the amp which drove me crazy. First tried a Neve di, ground lift or moving the di away from the amp made no difference. Then my Warm Audio Di, same thing. Then tried a cheap old passive one and.. no noise. Even with the warm audio one set to passive, I still had noise, so I don't know what gives there. And of course after all that hassle, I never used the DI track anyway. All that stuff really takes the fun out of everything and I'd rather just play.
However, I do have some more ideas to try the reamp thing and if I do something with it, will let you know.
|
|
|
|
Post by Mark (Basement Enthusiast) on Jan 28, 2022 6:57:56 GMT -7
Pardon my ignorance about how the UA OX Box works, but isn't anybody who's using that device technically re-amping? Or even the older Magnus Ultimate attenuator, or the newer Bad Cat Unleash? Or any of the Two Notes boxes..?
I've not used any of these (have only used passive attenuators) but yes I agree it sounds like a complete rabbit hole of tone-chasing and sound-processing methods at some point.
|
|
|
|
Post by adam on Jan 28, 2022 11:16:34 GMT -7
I think you could consider the ox a virtual re-cab and re-mic, except I'm not sure about the "re" part.  More like virtual cabs and mics. Re-amping is just recording the di guitar signal, then sending that out of the daw to a box which converts the line level signal to a regular instrument level signal to back into an amp and re-record that amp. I'll try it again soon and see what the pitfalls are. I'm sure you lose something in the process. I've been watching Dave Ratt's channel for a while now and one of things he was showing was how digital consoles screw up the sound. I tried it for fun in Cubase. Cubase has a test tone generator and a plugin called "super scope" or (something like that) which has an occilscope in it. Anyway, generate a square wave, look at it on the scope, looks good. Send that signal out of your interface and record it. Guess what... doesn't look much like a square wave anymore. He's done some other things with stepped signals that look like a descending staircase on the scope and once they run through digital, it looks like a triangle wave. Interesting stuff way beyond me. Also kind of fun, but he always test the digital consoles with a cheap analog one, and the analog one basically wins every time for whatever he's testing regarding quality of signal. |
|
|
|
Post by GuitarZ on Jan 28, 2022 11:38:01 GMT -7
Adam's got it. I was going to say, I head into the studio with my favorite solid state amp. The engineer eyes my amps and says "Plug your guitar into this splitter. I'll run one output right into my board to record your pure guitar sound. Run the other output into your pedals and amp. We'll record both." I record my parts and head on home. The engineer turns to his assistant and says "Well, that guy could play decently, but he's got to be kidding if he thinks that crappy amp sounds good. Go grab our Dr Z Maz Jr combo. When he comes back, he'll hear what real guitar tone sounds like." He replays that recorded pure sound into the Z and re-records the mic'd combo (or does another take into a Marshall or simulator or ...). I come back and say "Oh! I never realized how good my guitar could sound!"  |
|
|
|
Post by GuitarZ on Jan 29, 2022 9:13:54 GMT -7
Well, I think I solved the noise issues. Long story short is that I had to use balanced cables all of the way to the amp. Luckily, I have a volume control box that's balanced. So, the volume control box acted as my guitar volume control. I ran a balanced cable out of it and then used an old low-to-high impedance adapter right into my amp. I tried the impedance adapter ahead of a non-balanced volume control and guitar (unbalanced) cable to amp, but that was still noisy. Here's a regular take with my strat into my Ghia: Strat-Ghia-1x12 GreenbackHere's a re-amped version: Strat-Re-Amped-MazJr-1x12Greenback I leveraged the Ox's post-effects: Mid EQ Bump (Women Tone), Compressor, Delay, & a Little Reverb. So, the experiment was a success. I might invest in a real reamp interface. If nothing else, it's a great tool to experiment with sounds. I'm not sure if my final takes will be re-amp or not. But, I wouldn't have messed with the effects without the re-amp. I would have had to play a take, turn on the compressor, play another take, etc vs being able to switch stuff on and off, adjust tones & drive, etc through a single take. |
|
|
|
Post by adam on Jan 30, 2022 6:16:57 GMT -7
It worked! The reamp maybe sounded a little flatter, but that could be anything. Nice playing and recording.
|
|
|
|
Post by GuitarZ on Jan 30, 2022 8:42:10 GMT -7
It worked! The reamp maybe sounded a little flatter, but that could be anything. Nice playing and recording. Adam - For clarification, did you mean 'flatter' in a feel or pitch sense? And, Thank You, I appreciate the feedback. When I listen back now, the non-reamp clip sounds like there's more feel between me, the guitar, and the amp. And, for anyone interested in DIY'ing, I was wrong about needing a balanced volume control above. I found the patent for the first commercially available box and a few DIY designs. I believe my noise problem was simply poor shielding (or lack there of). I'll keep this as a tool to try new sounds. But, I don't want to take away the pure joy of plugging my guitar in and hearing my Z's. If anyone's interested, here is the patent: Patent (There's some back & forth about his patent since reamping had been done for a long time. But, basically, he simply patented his design, not the process. His was the first commercially available reamp box.) And, here's a good DIY design where the gent also explains the ins and outs of reamping: DIY Design |
|
|
|
Post by adam on Jan 30, 2022 12:08:51 GMT -7
It worked! The reamp maybe sounded a little flatter, but that could be anything. Nice playing and recording. Adam - For clarification, did you mean 'flatter' in a feel or pitch sense? And, Thank You, I appreciate the feedback. A little flatter in tone. |
|
|
|
Post by GuitarZ on Jan 31, 2022 9:35:47 GMT -7
Adam - Thank you. It was actually a flat note in my original solo heard by my guitar/keyboard player friend that sent me down a path of new solo & sound. One final note for anyone interested: After finding the 'sound' through reamping, I plugged the old strat in with all of the same settings, listened back, and realized the reamping lost 'articulation'. If you compare the clip below to the reamped above, they'll sound similar, but it's night & day in terms of articulation. Strat-Ghia-1x12 Greenback with Effects |
|
|
|
Post by helmi on Feb 6, 2022 10:44:00 GMT -7
I've been struggling with a guitar solo sound. My normal tone isn't cutting it.  And, the Mrs wasn't crazy about my previous takes. So, I thought I'd try some different tones to play back for her. Wow, must be tough having a live-in music critic with you! LOL |
|
|
|
Post by GuitarZ on Feb 6, 2022 13:53:37 GMT -7
Wow, must be tough having a live-in music critic with you! LOL If you ever met her, within the first five minutes she'd tell you the following: "Mike & I met in a Rock & Roll band. He was 18 and I was 25. We've been together for 41 years." So, I've had the live-in critic for quite a while. I will say that while she can't always pinpoint what I might need to do to improve something, she's pretty much right on if something's not right. So, it works pretty well. I suppose that's nice. So, not too tough. |
|
|
|
Post by gotmojo on Jul 25, 2022 10:30:13 GMT -7
oh! I see I’m kinda late to this thread. But ……
We’ve revamped a number of times, particularly with bass. I have the Reamp box, must be version 1, that is from the guy you had the patent info on. We usually play bass direct via Manley VoxBox into Pro Tools, then my son will often reamp it out to any number of mic’ed tube amps until he gets what he wants, then usually mixes the direct and the Reamp tracks together (I think he shifts the tracks to take care of phasing issues). We’ve also done it with guitar, but the only one I can think of is a track I plugged the Tele directly into the mic-pre into Pro Tools. That was a thin sounding scratch track that actually was played well, so we reamped it out to a Vox AC30. That particular track then sounded like no amp I’ve ever mic’ed up before, and the unusual tone was so cool, we kept it. Weird sounds are cool, sometime. Haven’t released that tune yet, so I can’t direct you to it as yet for a listen.
The Reamp box was made just for the purpose, and we’ve not noticed a problem with noise. It has a trim control to allow you to adjust the amount of signal going into the amp. Never tried any of the other reamp boxes. I’ve always meant to use it more, as I have some tracks that I played through a Kemper (now gone) that I wouldn’t mind Reamp’ing to see how that works. That experiment is pending!
One thing to consider, and this may or not be a problem, is that any track you recorded from an amp, will be like going through two amps when reamped. My thoughts are that, even if you recorded a distorted amp signal, you could change the character of that track significantly by reamp’ing out to an amp set up for a clean tone. Or vice versa, a clean amp tone reamp’ed into a distorting amp! Eventually I’m gonna play around with all of those scenarios. Might find that multi-amping like that will develop a fair amount of midrange build-up that may require some EQ in the box. All fun, though. Kinda hard to have a bad time futzing around with studio stuff.
jj
|
|
|
|
Post by gotmojo on Aug 26, 2022 9:26:34 GMT -7
Since my last entry on this thread, I have reamped guitar tracks several times with our Reamp box. Works simply superbly, and it’s kind of a no brained if you are like me, recording into the sleeping hours of normal people, recording a guitar track directly into the mic pre late at night. Then the next day reamp that track out to any of a number of amps to see what sounds best - set it on loop playback and walk around plugging into multiple amps to suss out the sound. Cool.
jj
|
|
|
|
Post by GuitarZ on Aug 26, 2022 13:43:50 GMT -7
Hmmm. Haven't thought about this in a while. Since starting this thread, I've made the switch from my old PC recording set up to a Mac with a UA Apollo Twin X.
The first thing that popped into my brain is that if I wanted to record my guitar direct, the Apollo Twin actually has a good amp/speaker model that I could use as a monitor giving me a good feel while recording. I know I could have gotten a splitter to do all that, but with the new set up, it's easy. Actually, I'm just remembering I've done it already because I wanted a pure direct-in guitar track to mess with the amp models. I just haven't outputted it to one of my Z's yet.
I'll have to give it a try with the cobbled-together boxes I had. Or, just get a Reamp box.
I'm lucky. Whether recording mid-day, night, etc, I'm going through my UA Ox. So, it's all quiet.
Thanks for bring this to my attention again.
|
|
|
|
Post by gotmojo on Aug 26, 2022 17:36:11 GMT -7
In a somewhat tangential thought process, but still in this arena - Ever since my son (also a playing/recording addict) recently talked about Lowell George and Ry Cooder recording guitars directly into the board (no amp), I’ve been doing some tracks direct in, through a tube mic pre, both clean and driven hard, and been digging the poo out of it! Have also reamp’ed a couple of those tracks with interesting results - not necessarily any better than the direct tracks. Using fairly heavy compression to these direct tracks is a gas, too.
Gawd, I love recording.
jj
|
|
And, the Mrs wasn't crazy about my previous takes. So, I thought I'd try some different tones to play back for her. It dawned on me, if I could re-amp my guitar, it would be easier and more efficient to play through and/or refine tones. I was able to construct a DIY re-amp set up.
More like virtual cabs and mics. Re-amping is just recording the di guitar signal, then sending that out of the daw to a box which converts the line level signal to a regular instrument level signal to back into an amp and re-record that amp. I'll try it again soon and see what the pitfalls are. 
And, the Mrs wasn't crazy about my previous takes. So, I thought I'd try some different tones to play back for her. 
