By golly, I think I've done it! Hard ...

Hey guys!
I know some of you guys have heard some of my stuff. I have been recording for 5 or so years. I am proud of a lot of the recordings I've made, but have always struggled with getting a really big, smooth, full distortion tone in my recordings. I'm not saying that what I've discovered is the solution to everything, nor that it's even a perfect tone in itself. There is no step by step formula. Every song is different and a tone that might sound great in one song can sound poor and out of place in another. At any rate, I consider this to be the best overall sound that I have been able to achieve with my equipment. I have miked up a couple Marshall stacks, a Mesa stack, and a few other small combo amps before, and none of them have given me what I'm looking for, although everyone claims that they will.
I have been holed up in my basement for the last few months, listening to commercial rock CD's and trying every mic position, amp setting, and stomp box to achieve that full, modern, high-gain tone (I also bought a POD XT and worked with that for a week and a half in the processs). I am, after being let down over and over again, finally satisfied with the tone I am getting. This is the result of tons and tons of hard work, and tons and tons of frustration. I am almost reluctant to share about it out of selfishness, but I want to help out as best as I can so that maybe someone might not have to go through some of the same frustrations.

The Amp:
I'm using a Line 6 Spider I 2x10. The high gain amp models built into this are decent-- better than the high gain channels on most guitar amps, but they just don't seem to cut it when miked up-- there are a lot of harsh frequencies around 1-3 khz. I am using the Line 6 clean amp model with the gain up about half way so that you are beginning to hear some break up when you hit the strings nice and hard. This overdrive really adds some character to the pedal distortion I am using before the amp (Which I'll discuss soon). The mid channel is set to about 2:00, the bass is at 1:00, and the treble channel is at 12:00. The same concept applies to many amps. Set the clean channel so you're getting a little bit of breakup. If you're using a tube amp, cranking the whole thing to get the power tubes smokin' is what would be ideal. The eq channel settings keep the tone warm and full so you don't get so much of that harsh and brittle high end. Don't cut so much that you loose all your presence, though.

The Guitar:
I would go so far as to say the guitar is the least important thing in this whole set up. I'm using the equivalent of an epiphone les paul standard (humbucker pickups), with a bit more volume on the bridge pickup.

The Pedal:
Yes, I know everybody says pedal distortion is terrible and you should use your amp. Well, I used to agree with that until recently. There are some pedals you really should stay away from (Danelectro Fab Tone, Digitech...). I've never been a huge fan of the Boss DS-1 either, but how good a pedal sounds is completely dependant on how it interacts with your amplifier. I took a trip to guitar center a while back and tried a bunch of their distortion pedals through the same amp with the same guitar. I tried out all of the Boss models, and compared them to each other. The overdrive pedals sounded good and full, but they were too light sounding and didn't give you enough gain or high end. The metal and distortion models sounded okay, but were too harsh and the high end was brutally painful on the ears. One model that I had never seen before was the Boss OS-2 Overdrive/Distortion. The second I stepped on it I was impressed (Remember that I went into this with some bad experiences with pedals, and did not believe a pedal was part of the answer to good tone). With the turn of the "color" and "drive" knobs I could get this thing to sound like any one of the Boss overdrive or distortion pedals. Moreover, I could get it to sound like a combination of them! Now I could get a full tone that still sounded heavy and crunchy. I bought it, and would recommend it to anybody for most any style of rock. It's a decent price, as well.
For this recording I had the volume of the pedal at a level so that the distortion level was similar to the clean level on the amp (about 2:00). I set the tone knob to about 12:00, the drive to a little below 12:00, and the color knob to 2:00.

The Microphone(s):
I am using the trusty SM57. Actually, 2 of them. Placing the microphone on the amp is an incredibly aggrivating process, since it has always seemed to me that no position would give you the full sound of the speaker. Either you stick it in the center of the speaker and get hit with all the harsh high end, or you push it off to the side and lose all of your prescence. Every single square millimeter on the speaker cone seems to have its own advantage and disadvantage. Well, now that we have good tone coming out of the amp, setting a mike up in the center of the cone was at least an option, but still lacked fullness. What I did, after trying different mikes and every single position imaginable, was use two 57's together, the same distance from the speaker, on the same speaker. Seems kind of simple, but I hadn't even tried it, thinking that it would just give me phase issues. Well, the truth is that if you keep the two mikes the same distance from the speaker, you're all set. No phase cancellation! So, I set one mike up right in the center of the cone, and the next one right half-way between the center and edge of the cone. Both mikes are right up against the grill to get the sound as big as possible. Recording to two separate tracks, I am able to mix in how much sizzle and fullness I want in the sound while I'm working on the mix later on. This is a great advantage to using two microphones, in my opinion. The sound you get is a much more accurate reproduction of what your ears hear in the room with the amp. I like to keep the second mic down about 7 dB in relation to the mike that is on the center of the cone, as a general setting.

Recording interface:
Echo Layla 3G sound card

The Preamps:
I'm using the built-in preamps on my Echo Layla 3G Sound card, which I find are quite nice.

The Compressor:
I'm using an FMR Audio Really Nice Compressor, Ratio of 3:1, Attack on 30 msec, and release on .5 sec for a dynamic, punchy sound.

I also added a bit of Digitalfishphone's THD plug-in. I didn't even touch the EQ yet.

So let me know what you think!

The file is named "Tone.mp3" Please excuse the guitar playing-- I couldn't quite get the double tracking to match. I'm actually not a guitar player :)

www.nowhereradio.com/arti...547&alid=-1

By golly, I think I've done it! Hard rock tone!