Our T5's in the studio sounding bad.

[Jeff R.]

We have two T5's in our band. We went in to a pro 48 track studio to start recording our second CD. Our T5's sound great when we play out but sounded thin & lacking punch in the studio .We couldn't get a good sound. Tried a bunch of different EQ settings on their pro tool rig. Tried different amps, cabinets, and mics. Still sounding thin!
(The engineer said they sounded to him like a Ovation plugged in to a old Peavey amp.) Going back in next week to redo all of the guitar tracks with My Les Paul & Strat through my Mesa Boogie.
Not happy at all with the T5 for recording.

Jeff

www.myspace.com/saturdayat11

[JHacker]

I don't understand. You mic-ed your amp right? So if the sound coming from the amp was great, the problem was obviously the mic rig into the computer. I would imagine a Les Paul --> Mesa would also sound great from the amp. But it sounds like it's going to have the same thin sound due to the way they set it up/their equipment. Plugged straight in would be a different story but you were micing your amps.

[SongwriterFan]

Did you use the amps you use for the gigs?

[Bob Womack]

It's an old story. A sound that "cuts through" live sounds thin in the studio, and vice versa. Most drummer's kits sound much better live than in the studio, because drummers spend their life selecting and tuning them for live work. The requirements are different for studio work. There really aren't any single-tool fixes and you'll find many guitarists using multiple instruments to get different sounds. you also often need to change your sounds. It's part of what a producer's job is about.

Bob

[Jeff R.]

Thanks for all of your replies.

We used the same amps and effects as we do live.


Jeff

[JoeInOttawa]

While I agree with what Bob is saying, I have to agree with JHacker: If it sounds good coming out of the amp, then it should sound good on tape, all else being equal.

When you're actually playing, how does it sound to you? When you hear the playback, does it sound the same as it does when you stand in the room with the amp?

Bob's right, of course: a guitar/rig tuned to cut through the mix will sound a little thin on its own. However, when you lay that guitar to tape, it still has to sit in the mix and cut through. The variables are a little different, but not hugely so. So I come right back to: Does the playback sound like the rig?

Don't suppose they're using more than one mic? I'm thinking maybe a phasing problem...

Joe

[Jeff R.]

Thanks JoeInOttawa.
I thought it sounded good coming out of the amp. It just sounds thin on playback.( Both T5's through different amps and mics.)

Jeff

www.myspace.com/saturdayat11

[cominghome419]

Don't suppose they're using more than one mic? I'm thinking maybe a phasing problem...

Yeah phasings the devil. But two mics for a T-5? Could be the room I suppose.

[Bob Womack]

I chewed this one over, overnight, trying to think of a way to phrase it. I settled for an analogy.

There are a couple of voicing approaches in guitars that form the far ends of a continuum. They appear in both acoustic and electric guitars. I'll have to use my own terms for them: I speak of the two ends of the voicing continuum as emphasizing either "individual-string definition" or "chordal cohesion". Two of the obvious contrasts in this area are Taylor and Martin dreads.

As Bob Taylor puts it, no matter how you bake 'em, Taylors tend to come out of the oven sound like Taylors, and Bob's acoutics emphasize individual-string definition. Speaking in generalities, the strong suit of a Taylor is that any note you play sounds full and deliberate. A by-product is that even when you play chords, the guitars tend to sound like multiple strings playing at the same time, making picking out any note very easy.

On the other hand, other than their booming bass, Martin dreads are known for a wonderful, homogenous sound, where the individual strings from which a chord is composed blend into a chord that is more of a single sound.

I know that is fuzzy, but it also exists in the electric world. Two of my electrics are a Les Paul and a Carvin TL60T. The Carvin is built with a maple through-neck with alder wings and ebony fingerboard. The Les Paul is, well a Les Paul, maple cap, mahogany body, rosewood fingerboard. When you play these guitars through a slightly gained-up amp for a crunchy rhythm sound, the differences are obvious: Chords mush into smooth, single sounds on the Les Paul but remain stacks of distinct notes on the Carvin until you gain WAY up. The rounder LP sound makes it work marvelously into the background when the Carvin will still be screaming for attention.

Each of these example guitars have their uses and I love each of them for their particular qualities. The Carvin "cuts through" live better than the Les Paul but has a harder time drifing into the background as a rhythm instrument in recordings.

Not having recorded a T5 yet, I can't comment on it's qualities, but I remember what Bob Taylor said about his acoustics.

I hope this helps a wee bit,

Bob

[Photomaniac]

To be honest I'm a bit suspicious of the engineer. If it sounded good coming out of the amp and the engineer couldn't get that mic'ed amp to sound good on tape, then I think the problem is the engineer not the T5. We've all heard the T5 recorded sound and it's certainly better than the thin sound you described.
Unfortunately if my theory is right, it still doesn't solve your problem unless you get a new engineer or change studios. Also waiting for this guy to tweak your guitar sounds to something more acceptable can get expensive.

Good luck.

[JoeInOttawa]

Hey Bob!

Excellent analogy -- I'm a fan! I have the same in spades with my two main electrics, one a custom-built strat that is all about the individual notes, and the other a Paul with '57 classics -- the ultimate note melting pot. So I get what you're saying.

I also have limited experience in the studio, so that should serve as a preface to my comments, but to me, if the guitar sounds good at the amp, but it sounds thin in iso (i.e., soloed on playback) I now believe that that could be a rig-tuning issue, but I also think it could be something else.

My initial reaction was that something is going wrong between the microphone and the console, because that has been my (limited) experience. I once worked with a guitarist who insisted (based on an article he had read about a guitar icon's recording setup) that we set up three mics in the room, including one hypercardioid 15 feet downstream of the amp aimed at the speakers. The result was that the mics sounded okay (even really quite good) on their own, but when we started adding them together, the guitar sounded like a chainsaw on bathroom tiles -- no bottom to speak of, just ice-pick-sharp trebles.

We did a couple of things:

1. We retuned the rig just a bit (which I think responds to your suggestion).
2. We time-adjusted for the long-distance mic (which means we added a single delay to the close mic and swept the inital delay until it time-aligned with the distance mic -- and it was VERY obvious when the two aligned).
3. We turned the third mic off. Didn't tell the guitar player, though.

That just brought it all back together.

I have one other experience to share, and it has to do with the T5. I have loaned my T5 to another artist to record something here in town, and went with them to the studio. The engineer sneered at what he considered a "halfbreed guitar," said something similar (but much ruder) to what was suggested to Jeff: Get a strat and a proper acoustic, and don't waste my time with that gimmicky half-breed.

He reluctantly recorded it, and when it sounded thin, he said "See? Gimmicks don't work, get a real guitar."

The artist took the raw tracks home, added a delay to the nearfield mic, a compressor and a little EQ to the whole thing, and solved the sound issue. But the real problem was that the engineer didn't want to work with the "gimmick."

My concern is that this may be what's happening here. People (mostly older guys) still snicker at my T5 from time to time, and it drives me nuts.

Yeah, I'm way too sensitive!



Joe

[Jeff R.]

UPDATE
Well we tried. Only could use one out of the four songs we recorded with our T5's. Redid the other three songs with my Les Paul, Strat. & Ibanez AM73.


Thanks for your replies!

Jeff

www.myspace.com/saturdayat11

[wthurman]

It could be the studio/engineer, too. Even a good engineer's approach to recording an instrument might not work in every case. It's just something to consider. I don't care how much equipment and pizazz there is. I'm not saying that's the case... only that it's a possibility, and a pretty common issue.