ok vintage gear is all the rage , you will get that warm tube sound using vintage gear compared to the shrill digital sound.....everyone has hear this schpeel before, but is it true? Sorry Charlie!!! It has been my experience that this is total BS!!! I think people sometimes forget all the crappy audio faults with old vintage gear, for example recording to CD vs a cassette tape (recall the hisss and the hum and distortion.Now for recording, why are all many studios going digital if recording vintage analog is so great?! Why? Because its not!! There is noise ,hiss and hum, all enemies of a good recording. However, there are some true vintage mic pre's and consoles that do in fact sound better.
When I was younger I bought all these purist's BS about vintage gear, but now I am hear to testify that just because its old doesn't mean it sounds good.Sound different or Interesting? , maybe. Then again a tube mic pre sounds great. In fact, I have found that the best is a combination fo old and new really works great. You get the best of both worlds and hopefully eliminate the nasty stuff of the old. In fact, some old "vintage"gear I treasure but little of it can be used daily. However, some pieces are exceptional and can not be recreated it seems.
Vintage Amps vs modern technology
There is no doubt that old tube guitar amps are really great sounding, however, they lack a lot of modern sound capabilities which I need. I decided to pas on the Vintage 70's Alamo amps simply because they
are one trick pony's musically, which is nice, they get a couple of sounds and they do it well. However, I also found that for recording that modeling technology works so well as well., especially in imitating preamps of different amps, they cant seem to nail the tube amp section,but the preamp I assure you they can.So I am still working on a happy medium. The line6 pod xt live is just an amazing amp modeler and it really sounds great. So, I have recorded most of my albums with the pod xt live and took for granted just how good it sounds. It emulates many "vintage" amps that would cost a fortune to own them all and to use them all in one recording session would require a lots of space and roadies too haha.Ok, well, now line 6 has the pod xt3 live , similar but basically 2 pod xt live's in one pedal, so you can mix amp models to get one sound. This is very interesting, but is it worth another $500? Probably not, I am quite please with the pod xt live and $500 could buy a couple of crate tube amps or other gear haha. So I am torn between buying a vintage amp that sounds great but is limited to what it does or a emulator that comes so very close and also offers many sounds.
I have to remember the lesson I learned long ago when I had 2 huge rack full of tube amps, tube preamps, f/x units and so on and found that A little digitech rp-50 pedal could do the same thing, except the little pedal was about $50.00 compared to the $5000 or so for the rack setup, sily really. Its like buying a marshall 100watt 1/2 stack fro your home studio and finding that you cant get any toe out of it unless you crank it up so loudly that it kills yours ears and your neighbors complain etc....silly. So its a trade off, for me, I want that quality that a vintage
tube amp can provide but it has to be able to mix with my modern gear,...anyway rambling a bit...
Patience
I am really enjoying being patient in terms of music gear, rather than buying things on impulse because it sounded good at the time or in the music store haaha. Several thousands of dollars would be gone and I would have enough gear to start a small music store. (not a bad idea hahah). So, I am complementing purchases, such as mic preamps, microphones, more amps, guitars,f/x,etc.. but it really has to be something I need or that provides a sound that is an improvement and that I cant get with existing gear.
Old guitar tones vs new tones
I recall playing was easier when I was younger ...why? Oh yes I recall now, because my guitar sound was drenched in 80's distortion and hid my sloppy playing and you could not hear each note clearly. Over the years, my playing became much better and I notice that I use 1/10 the amount of distortion and notes ring out clearly for the most part these days. So, guitar tones have pro's and con's. however, I still don't like fender amps for the most part, I suppose for the clean sounds they are decent, but the gain ch is just wimpy and I have hated it since I first heard it years ago. Then again, I was after 80's metal tones which required a hi gain amp which a fender. twenty years later, I have grown to appreciate the fender clean tones, but still cant appreciate the gain ch on a fender amp, sounds like poop.
PC in Studio: new or Old
These days, a used (refurbished /pre owned) PC consists of Dell pentium 4 single core 2.4 ghz system with ide drives. WOW!!! That more than I use now and I can get the system tower described above for about $89 +$25s/h. That's hard to beat and fo audio it covers just about anything you would want to do with it. However, for $89 you could also get a dual core amd motherboard cpu combo which would be an amd x2 3800 which would be really fast and for me overkill for an audio pc, but could double as a video PC for video editing. SO i am torn as to which to get. Then again, my existing 1.7 amd semptron is doing great and has covered all my needs thus far. It wold be nice to split duties between different pc's though. One for audio sample playback and storage, one fo audio recording and editing and one as an editor for my roland recorders and line 6 pedalboard, though all of these functions could be done with one PC.
I still use the old crt 21" monitors and love them. however, I do plan to move to lcd's eventually as I sure could use the room,but again is it essential no? not for me and I like the picture of my 21" monitors for now. In fact it would be nice to use a hd lcd TV as a monitor like a 37 or 40" would be great as most of the audio software is graphic based, essential no? cool? very...ahaha,but for now, I am working on my 132nd album and the existing gear is working well, though I must say my poor pc is doing its best but could at least use a memory upgrade. I us about 1gb of memory and it would work so much better with 2gb.Lucky that my audio card has it own processor and the video card has its own memory and processor so that helps a lot. Also, I have a dual core laptop and I did video on a single core and the dual core and the dual core didn't process all that much faster.
Bass sound recording
I take for granted that I use my guitar to emulate bass and then use loops for bass lines. Well, I had a track where the bass didnt record, so I had to go back and add it, gees, I didn't realize how boring that is yawn!!I mean to hold down the bottom end over and over and over again is plain boring geez. I much prefer my method of looping a bass line most of the time.
Mackie 32x8x2 Mixing console
I love this console, it sounds really good, but its a lot for one person,I like the routing options, sounds of the mic pre's and EQ's,but don't use all the ch's. I am also curious to see if I could get better quality with external mic pre's, so I may sell this mixing console. I haven't as I am constantly using it to record my albums. But I think I may at some point. It would be better for someone recording a full band needing all those ch's or in a live situation. But It has a sound of its own that I cant recreate with my 14ch mackie mixer, so I hesitate...we will see....
80's metal guitar tone
I am currently playing back a track I recorded with a new guitar tone (courtesy of the line 6 podxt live) which emulates a "cranked" soldano amp head. Wow!!! Its nice, though its a little exaggerated, the tone is very 80's metal and sounds a bit like randy rhoads [though not as processed as his "reamped" guitar tone on the tribute album (live he did not sound like that really tone wise)] . Anyway, kind of fun to play with but I wouldn't be happy if that were my main or only tone you see and this goes back to soeme amps gettting one good sound and thats it.
ok, gotta finish up Modern Rock guitar volume 132!!!........
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