My Gear Demo

[Telewanger]

A few guys were asking me to make a gear demo. I made one today. I will make a better one when I have more time.

My video camera must have a built in noise reduction or compressor in it. The guitar amp volumes are loud, but the camera mic doesn't let the sound breath. It makes some of the tones sound a lot worse and compressed than they are here in the room, then youtube compresses it even more, but what can you do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN68Mi6dm0U

[deeaa]

A few guys were asking me to make a gear demo. I made one today. I will make a better one when I have more time.

My video camera must have a built in noise reduction or compressor in it. The guitar amp volumes are loud, but the camera mic doesn't let the sound breath. It makes some of the tones sound a lot worse and compressed than they are here in the room, then youtube compresses it even more, but what can you do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN68Mi6dm0U

I liked the spanky clean tone quite early in the clip a lot. The drives were...well...camcorder mics are pretty lacking in sonic reproduction but I'm sure you'd get much better results if you reduced the drive amount greatly. That's an impressive collection of gear and I bet it sounds nice live, but recording such sounds is another matter. Most condenser mics just tend to pick up the drive too much and compression really makes it stand out too.

Years ago I was watching a studio clip where Brian May was playing his Vox and when the camera was in the playing room, you heard it was nigh clean, just cranked and crunchy, but as the camera walked without stopping to the monitoring room and you heard the sound being recorded with all the compressors etc...well it was _very_ driven.

Find a drive level you like, then reduce it and reduce it until it becomes painfully hard to play, i.e. doesn't support the playing with the drive but really makes you pick out every cord, and then you know it'll sound good on tape. When it's pretty much totally clean when you play very gently and only sounds driven when you pick harder, that's the best. Impossible to play hammer-ons etc. with such a sound though, so you may need more for flashy leads.

Like on this song often give as example and I recorded at our training facility, would you not say the guitars are driven? If you listened to any of the guitars soloed and with no compression etc, you'd notice they sound almost clean...but in the context they sound quite driven enough.
http://deeaa.pp.fi/crankenhaus/crankenhaus%20-%20my%20rage.mp3

Just my 2c of course, but since you seem not happy with how the sound records, try that. Drop them drives to as low as you can live with and see if it doesn't improve the recorded sound a lot.

[Telewanger]

Hey deeaa,

Thanks for your input. I appreciate it. Great advise!

[Geoffrey Charles]

I enjoyed that vid. Thanks for posting it.

[Telewanger]

Thanks,

I am glad you liked it!

[ZMAN]

Excellent demo. I am a pedal guy all the way. I enjoyed the various tones you dialed in for different styles of playing. I have a surround speaker system attached to my computer including a powered sub and it sounded quite good. Love the tone on that Twin.