Big Tones Part 3, the Audio Clip!

Drewcifer Begins Video Blog:

Analog Planet Presents Big Guitar Tones in the Studio

Part 1



Part 2

Bloggity Blog Blog!

"Jimi, Buddy, Janis, I'm coming to see you in Rock and Roll Heaven!" Does the name of this Toadworks-USA pedal refer to the fact that classic tube amps like the '60s Marshalls always sounded incredible just before they blew-up?

I have not blogged in a while because Analog Planet has been taking most of my time, and my commitment to little drew takes up the rest. Oh Daddy Day Care!

So this will be a catch-up blog.

First, Analog Planet has gained some new lines of gear, including Quested Monitors and Coles Microphones and AccuSound Cables. We're also talking to a couple other companies that we are very excited about, Pearlman Mics and Toadworks Guitar Pedals. Been looking for a good boutique pedal and I am rippin' with excitement about Toadworks!

Excited about all the new schtuff!

Second, I was profiled in the Patriot Ledger. Check it out here.

Third, we did some business with a cool studio in Evergreen Colorado, named, appropriately, "Evergroove". This is a neat, neat studio, and Brad, the main guy there is one of the good ones in this crazy business. Check out their site here.

Fathom This, Baby!

I CD I poured my heart and soul in to engineering/mixing and co-producing was recently released. "Fathom This!" is the first release in nearly a decade by Boston's Daddies of Surf Instro music, The Fathoms. I had worked with them back in '95 or '96; then we started this in '05 -- 10 years later. It took a while to get it done and even longer for the label -- Cali's MuSick Records -- to release it. But it's out and I hope everybody likes it as much as I do. I listen to it in my car regularly. It's great driving music. Twang guitar God Frankie Blandino and company have created much more than a Surf LP. "Fathom This" ranges from Surf, Spy Jazz, Western film and TV themes to, I guess you'd call it '60's Brit-influenced Beat music. There's even a "Bike-Sploitation" track, ala Davie Allan and the 60's drive-in biker-bash vibe. Sax-master Dave Scholl and Mariachi Trumpeter Tom Halter make wonderful cameo appearances.
We recorded it at my Altitude Studios and then mixed it at my house in the Flying Scotsman room.
Go to Amazon, order "Fathom This!" and ride a reverb-splashed wave!

Ribbon Candy: The Royer Mic and Great Guitar Tone

Over the last decade, Royer Lab's R121 Velocity Ribbon microphone has changed the lives of guitar-recordists like me. I've always quested for great guitar tone, both live and in the studio. Even in the '80's people asked how I was getting my studio guitar sounds, and my secret weapon then was the Beyer M500 large ribbon. So, I had already discovered ribbons at a time when I literally knew of NO other engineer that was using them for electric guitar. For my lead solos I was using typically a Fender 1966 Super Reverb or a Mesa Boogie MKII through a 2 X 12 Fender Bassman cab (old cream colored one), with an M500 on each 12", through API 512B mic pre-amps, through Urei LA-3A compressors direct to tape. This was usually with my '61 Strat, so as you can imagine, the tone was pretty freakin' good.

The problem with ribbons is they can't handle loud levels, so of course, I ended up blowing out the ribbons in the Beyers. Then in 1998, along comes David Royer with the R121 mic, and bang! A ribbon mic that can handle high SPL. I bought one immediately. Mine is from the first 150 ever made, and I still have it. Changed my life and everyone else's because by then people had started talking about using ribbons for guitar. Producer Steve Albini, who was working with the biggest bands in alternative and Grunge was a vocal proponent of ribbons. The Beyer M160 and the Coles 4038 (both of which I had) were old designs that were getting popular again. The Royer gave me a tone that was dark, velvety and downright chocolatey. I got a Bogner Shiva amp in Y2K that was already really "brown" sounding, so that coupled with the Royer was as thick and syrupy as it gets! I had also started a resurgent love-affair with Gibson guitars, and was revelling in the fat humbucker tone that I had loved as a kid. Woman-tone ala early Clapton, Peter Green, The Allmans and Santana. Oh and lest I forget Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, was my Numero Uno Guitar-God (or should I say Diablo?) when I was a kid. Needless to say, my guitar tones of the past half-decade, using a couple different LPs and a screamin' SG have been, um, high-calorie. Greasy. Buttery. Cream-filled. Gumbo-esque.

I'm getting hungry...

Here's a taste: Listen to the song "She's The Devil" which, as I recall, is mostly my SG Standard through either my Bogner or my Top Hat Emplexador. Pretty sure it's the Bogner with it's own 12 double-mic'd. Mics are Royer R121 and Shure SM7 (that's right, SM7, not 57) pres are API 512C (hey, don't fix what ain't broke!) and there was no compression while printing. I'm especially fond of the dual harmony lead guitar solos. Notice how both main guitars go to lead, leaving just the rolling bass and drums beneath (no extra rhythm gtr).



The Wonderful 121

Ghost Harmonics

Well, I have to start with something, right? I have so much I want to post, that deciding where to begin is hard. So I went to some recent posts of mine on Gearslutz and pretty much randomly grabbed one.

It's choice was not quite random, truth-be-told. I have been listening to a couple CDs I engineered and produced back in '90 and '91 by a band called Anastasia Screamed. This was a very unusual, adventurous band. You could almost call them Avant Garde, and definitely ahead of their time (Pre Nirvana "Never Mind"). The sound-scape we created was that of noisy but flowery guitars, sometimes harmonically beautiful, sometimes clashing and dis-cordant.

http://www.anastasiascreamed.com/index_flash.html
http://www.myspace.com/anastasiascreamed23

We layered electrics (primarily Fenders) and acoustics over multiple tracks. Like, the two guitar-players would both play on the basic track along with the drums and bass, and then I'd have the two of them both do an overdub pass at the same time, often playing different parts and guitars than they had played on the basic. So in two passes we had created four electric tracks. Then we'd do leads and acoustic guitars, feedback tracks, the occasional slide guitar part, and even a dulcimer or mandolin track on a song or two.

The guitar mics we used were SM57, Senn 421, Beyer M500 ribbon (my secret weapon back then, before the whole ribbon revival), and even some very nice vintage condensers, like Neumann U67, M49 and AKG C12. Pres were usually API 512B, along with the desk pres from a Trident 80B and a Neve V. Compression, when used, was usually my standard choice, the Teletronix Urei LA-3A. Nice gear huh? Recording guitar is my love and my specialty anyway, so I was in hog-heaven. And these guys were good players, albiet unorthodox. Funny thing was, they could play everything from country to blues to jazz to Led Zepplin if they felt like it. But their original songs sounded like all of those influneces spun together in some psychedelic Osterizer. The result was challenging alternative rock music, which some might even consider an acquired taste.

So I'm driving around in my car the last couple days, listening to these CDs for the first time in 1o years, and really enjoying what I was hearing, especially the guitars. And knowing full-well there were many guitar tracks, I was hearing sounds-- voices, bells, organs, etc --that I know were NOT part of the recording. And this time I was sober as a judge, unlike when we were creating the recordings. Let's just say there was a lot of "magic" happening in the studio then.

Which brings me to the Gearslutz post:
http://gearslutz.com/board/
Replying to a guy who was hearing a "phone ring" in a mix he was working on.

Phones, choir voices, horns, acoustic guitars, harps, angels...If you DON'T hear those things in your mixes you are unusual. I noticed it much more in the all-analog days, but when all those instruments combine they create overtones and bell-like sounds that become a sounds in-and-of themselves. We called 'em "Ghost Harmonics". I remember one time we were mixing this tune and suddenly this keyboard string kinda synth part just appeared out of nowhere. There were no keys on the tracks. All guitars and vocals. When we played the finished mix for the artist, they actually thought we had added a keyboard part. Nope. Overtones.