747 Caught!
Right, so despite all of our experiments and what I wrote in the last installment, we’ve changed a few things for recording guitar.
I decided that even though the guitar sounds we were getting were really great, I just wasn’t nailing it. It was dam close to what I heard in my head but not quite there. I tried some different mic combinations and the one I liked the best for Rob’s guitar, after all the experimentation was the SM57 in close with the Neumann TLM103 about 15 feet away at ear level. I’ll probably use a different mic in close for Dean just to make sure the two guitars are colored by different microphones in close.
Most of you know by now I’m a shameless gear head and will buy and try anything that piques my interest in my eternal quest for the ultimate sounds for bass, drums and guitar. (Hi, my name is Mark, I’m an equipment junkie. It has been 18 days since my last gear purchase . . . ) Through some selling and buying on eBay I managed to acquire two unbelievable pieces of gear. I found a ‘76 Hiwatt 100 watt DR103 amp wired by Harry Joyce himself. I was inspired by a number of things to find one. I saw a Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii DVD, which was filmed in ‘75 or something, and they had stacks and stacks of Hiwatt’s. Even the keyboard player had them piled up for his stuff. Gilmour’s guitar sounded incredible. Clean yes, but just amazing tone and 
sustain. I’m a fan but truthfully I bought the DVD because I had read that there are some studio shots of them recording “Dark Side of the Moon” and I wanted to eyeball the now vintage gear they used. Supposedly they had spent $500,000 building a brand new up to the minute recording studio to record that album. A ridiculous sum back then. I had also been listening to the new Green Day album and read where they used a Hiwatt mixed in with a Marshall for some of the guitar sounds. Even though that guitar sound is way over the top for me, I liked alot of elements of it and I was sure I could hear some of that Hiwatt sound in there. The thing that made me absolutely have to get one for us to use on this new album was listening to an album I had bought more than a year ago but never listened to once until I recently loaded it into my iPod. The Who re-released “Live at Leeds” in it’s entirety as the “Deluxe Edition.” They remixed AND re-mastered it as well – like The Who need to be louder right? The original “Live at Leeds” had just six songs on it, this Deluxe Edition has thirty-three and includes the entire performance of “Tommy” from that night at Leeds University in 1970. Anyhow, the guitar sound on that record is mind boggling and that’s what made me seek out an original Hiwatt.
The second thing I managed to acquire through unloading a few more pieces of scorned gear is a Marshall model 1959 100 watt Super Lead Plexi re-issue. Another fine example of classic rock guitar tone dreamland. Now some of you may turn your nose up at the re-issue and for the purists, understandably so. Some say they don’t sound much like the originals. Of course they don’t but they don’t cost as much either. HOWEVER, I found there are some things you can do to get these re-issues to sound indistinguishable from the originals. First and foremost, the output transformer should be replaced with what is known as a “Tone Clone” made specifically for these amps. These are EXACT replicas of the original transformers made for Plexi’s in 1968-69. In any tube amp, this is the most important part of the amp and has the greatest influence on your sound. It’s that last component that your guitar goes through before it leaves the amp and heads to the speakers. A cheap output transformer will make a great guitar and guitar player sound horrible. The second thing is to replace the printed circuit board and it’s components with a hand wired point-to-point board. I won’t bore you with the details as it was alot of fun to do, (see pic to the right) but the end result is an amazing “historically accurate” sounding Marshall Plexi. It sounds good even through a shitty 1×12 cabinet! This amp sounded really great before I modded it, Rob and I did a few scratch tracks with it to see how it would 
work in the mix and it was great even before I updated it with all the replica innards. One of the things that forced me to retrograde these components was that while changing the tubes, I noticed that one of the wires on the output transformer was worn through and could ground out on the chassis at any time. It had been replaced with a non-Marshall stock transformer and to repair it . . . well, it was just as easy to replace it. And since I had to take the board out to do that, for $80 more I could have a complete point-to-point board. So I went for it headlong. Now it’s as if Angus himself played on our album! Rob liked it so much that decided to unload his ‘82 Marshall JCM800 that he bought brand new in 1982 (now considered “vintage” – imagine that!) and get himself an all original ‘74 Marshall 100 watt Super Lead. He’s using it live and absolutely loves it. Dean is actually getting close to getting a Super Lead as well – that’s how great these things sound! It inspires people to go spend $1200 on a vintage amp just to have great guitar tone! You say you never heard one before? Yes you have! Listen to AC/DC Highway to Hell, listen to any Zeppelin song, Van Halen I & II, just about any great rock guitar sound was recorded with a Super Lead. It’s just hard to go wrong! Leave the master volume amps for the Fizz Donkeys of the world!
So back to what we recorded. Rob used the Marshall Plexi with my old Les Paul on a few songs that are flat out rockers for his sounds and we recorded scratch tracks of Dean’s parts using the Hiwatt to see how they would sound together. They mix together really well and sound fucking fantastic. For the Marshall I mostly used the SM57 mic in close on an old Marshall cab with the Neumann room mic, and for the Hiwatt I used the Trace Elliot guitar cab with an RE-20 close with the Neumann room mic and mixed to taste. For the Marshall I also mixed in a very small amount of the Palmer PDI-03 speaker simulator and used a Marshall SE-100 speaker simulator on the Hiwatt. The speaker simulators have a very distinct sound to them and I am using a different one for each guitar player so the nuances of the respective guitar sounds will stay unique and not be colored by a piece of gear that was used on the opposite guitar. The speaker simulator adds a bit of “in your face” sound that the various microphones don’t offer. It’s a nice touch and helps to keep the guitar sound from getting too dark without adding fizzy brightness to the top end.
Here is a list of the six songs we did guitars for and we did slightly different things depending on what the song called for. We have so many songs that there’s no way all of them will end up on the CD but here ya go anyhow! We just did scratches for Dean’s side but we’ll use the same setup for Dean when he comes in to do his tracks.
1. Hot on Your Heels – a mid tempo rock song with a very catchy melody. Starts with a guitar riff and we used the Marshall Plexi with the Marshal cab and my old Les Paul on Rob’s side and a ‘72 Telecaster Deluxe with the Hiwatt through Dean’s 4×12 Mesa-Boogie cab on the other.
2. Fool’s Confession – Not a slow song but close. We used a stock Stratocaster through the Hiwatt with the Trace cab for Rob’s side and the Tele through the Marshall Plexi with the Boogie cab on Dean’s scratch track. We also used an acoustic for one track that Rob played. I miked it with the Neumann at about the 12th fret and sent the direct signal through the Avalon U5 direct box. It takes some of that nasty “electric Ovation” sound away that I absolutely loathe. I mixed the mic way louder than the direct signal to give it as much openness as I could.
3. Don’t Know About Women – This is a hard heavy one so for this song on the Marshall we dimed every knob on the front and let her rip! It’s really overdriven and sounds great! Rob used the Les Paul on both his side with the Marshall Plexi/Marshall cab and also through the Hiwatt/Trace on Dean’s scratch track.
4. Big Bang Boom – Starts with a real wide sounding picking chord pattern guitar. Rob used the Tele through the Marshall Plexi/Trace cab for his sound and we used the Les Paul with the Hiwatt/Boogie cab for the other. The Trace cab is much tighter than the Marshall cab and depending on what the song calls for I’ll switch up the amp/cab combination for what I think would work in the mix for the particular song.
5. No Regrets – Nice simple song with not even a guitar solo. Starts with a guitar riff. Stratocaster through the Marshall Plexi/Marshall for this one on Rob’s side. Les Paul through the Hiwatt/Trace on the other.
6. A Thousand Thank You’s – Or for those of you from Pennsylvania, it’s “A Thousand Thank Yooze.” Just acoustic guitar, so far, I think we’ll do one electric track but it won’t be very loud in the mix. We did this one the same way as the other acoustic track. We had to do it the same as we had to return the very expensive Ovation to it’s owner as it was a loaned to me just to do these two songs.
On the Plexi we jumped the channels as is standard to do with these things. The settings on the amp are, leave Presence on 0, the bass on about 2 (except the one song where we dimed everything!), Mids on about 8, Treble on 8, Normal channel on 6, Treble channel on 7.
The Hiwatt stays fairly clean unless you really push the output section of the amp. Hiwatts have a reputation for being the loudest amps ever made. No wonder Townshend lost his hearing a bit. Luckily the cabs are fairly isolated from where we sit and record, because I have to run the volume on about 8 to get the really cranked sound I want. On 8, you cannot stand in the same room as the amp, it rips your head right off! Even thirty feet away is painful. The Normal and Bright channel are jumped like the Plexi with each channel on about 7 and the presence, mid and tone on 6 and the bass on 5. It’s really quite difficult to make a Hiwatt sound thin or like shit. Just crank up the mains and start playing “Won’t Get Fooled Again” or “Who Are You” it sounds “just like the record!”
Here’s the signal path for the tech heads:
Guitar -> Amp -> Speaker out to Palmer PDI-03 -> Speaker through to cabinet -> SM57 (or RE-20) close mic, Neumann TLM103 room mic -> both mics to separate Presonus MP-20 Mic pre’s -> Behringer Ultra-Curve Pro eq dual mono mode -> 2 Empirical Labs Distressors, 10:1 Opto mode Attack on 3 Release on 5 -> two inputs mixed to one track on VS-2480.
Palmer PDI-03 XLR out -> Presonus MP-20 mic pre -> Behringer Ultra-Curve Pro -> Drawmer compressor, 4:1 attack on 15 ms release on 500 ms -> one track on the VS-2480.
Since I know how I want these to sound and have gotten quite in touch with how everything is being mixed down, I’ve been mixing the mics down to one track on the fly and using the other track for the speaker simulator. I’ve spent a lot of time on guitar sounds I know, but we don’t care – if it ain’t worth doing right, then why bother?
I’ll be checking back soon – Mark