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Music reviews, editorials, gear reviews for the guitarist/bass player, journal entries, advice, funny crazy stuff and more. Updated roughly 2-3 times a week.
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Thursday, September 15, 2005Creswell In Studio - Days 4 & 5 (this one admittedly is for the musicians and the recording fanatics in the room) After waiting 24 hours to acquire the Fender Hot Rod DeVille that was so aggressively recommended to me and so gloriously played back to me from previous projects in the studio, we got it (212 combo) in the live room only to discover that it had a blown speaker, and there was no mitigating the effect said blown speaker was having on the sound coming out of it. They were scrambling to call the owner back immediately to inform him of the situation and to immediately notify him that “we got it that way” lest he attempt to get them to pay for it. I wasn’t sure if I’d get the amp today or not, so just in case, I did a little bit of research myself. If you’ve read the first few days worth of recording blogs, then you know I own a Peavey 50 Classic. It’s a tweed amp that looks suspiciously like a Fender Bassman. Four EL84’s in the power amp with a 12AX7 driver, two 12AX7’s in the preamp, four Blue Marvel 10” speakers, 50 watts, 2 channels, 3-band EQ, bright switch, master volume. Later versions came with an effects loop, but mine doesn’t have one. I started looking up both the DeVille and my 50 classic. Both amps come in a 212 and a 410. A few reviews I read said the 410 sounded a little brighter than the 212, which makes sense. And then I found a review from a guy that did a side-by-side comparison of the two and basically came away from the experience with the opinion they sounded very similar, with the Fender being a little louder, at 60 watts (two 6L6 power tubes and three 12AX7 preamp tubes). So now faced with finally obtaining the exact amp we were looking for and it having a problem with such delaying consequence that waiting was not an option, I started to feel an air of panic fill the room. Before anyone offered up any solutions, I spoke up. “Look I know how you guys feel about Peavey brand stuff, but before we start calling stores all over the area, I think you should know that I did some research today and I found a few things that said the Peavey 50 Classic was a very similar amp to the DeVille. I think between settings tweaking and mic preamp tweaking (see pic below), etc that we can obtain the essence of what we’re looking for through my amp.
My lead singer, Will, and I headed outside to talk while they worked. Kyle's neighbor, let's call him "Randy", chuckled as he swaggered over to us. “You fellers make any money doing this [stuff]?” he cajoled in a booming voice. I humored him for conversation’s sake since I had nothing better to do, as I leaned against my SUV parked on the curb. Randy had the kind of accent that you hear people up North use to make fun of Southern drawl while chewing tobacco threw their tooths. Very exaggerated and over-the-top, except Randy's was for real. Right out of “King of the Hill”. Randy's tight white, single pocket, stained tee shirt did not cover his beer-filled gut. His graying blond hair was greased in a most peculiar fashion and, as it turned out, Randy gives free band management advice. See Randy's son is somewhat of a celebrity Vegas. He’s one of the Elvis imitators that are actually quite good at what they do and are frequently featured. Randy seemed quite proud at the number of ladies his son takes back to his room each night and free beer he can get when he goes to see his son at the shows. Will quickly made an excuse to break away, briefly went downstairs, and returned stating they were ready for me. I watched "Randy" setup a metal folding table right on the sidewalk and bring out several armfuls of swords, knives, and other ancient cutlery and weapons with a paper signed taped to the front that said “for sale”. I overheard a comment from him about “Lord of the Rings nerds” and “needing to make some beer money” as I strolled down to the basement door. Before I plugged in Sophia in the control room to the patch panel I took a gander at the settings on the amp. The “Pre” (like a gain knob) was cranked to about 80%, and set the “Post” to about 50% and the “Master” to about 50% too. The treble was set to somewhere between 60 and 75%, the bass to about 75% and the mids right around 30-40%. The presence was only brought up about a quarter turn from 0. Sophia’s tone knobs were completely rolled off to 0, which struck me as weird, but what I was hearing was sounding great so we must have been compensating for the lack of presence either with the amp and/or with the mic preamps. I wasn’t sure how close to what we were targeting I would be able to get after it was mic’d and everything else. Much to everyone’s pleasant surprise, we nailed it. Maybe even better than what they were getting with the DeVille, because of the way we set up the mics. Apparently a mixer they used said he had some problems with phasing with a previous mic strategy. This time we went with a single Audix i5 at a slight angle on the bottom left speaker. It was gorgeous. The tone flowed like butter to the mic, and out the control room speakers. We all smiled. It was working. Slowly more and more comments came from the producers about how they would have to make some exceptions to their Peavey ban. Zig mentioned he’d heard some really good things about the 5150 as well and, after this experience, would be more willing to experiment with the brand. We had to have tracked the rhythm guitar part no less than 8 times for the entire song from start to finish. It’s my understanding that they will probably be cut up in Pro Tools, but that when we’re finished we’ll have one guitar part panned all the way to the left, another all the way to the right, and at least one panned center (maybe two). After a couple hours of tracking rhythm guitars, Kyle gave a quick smirk, looked at me and said, “Let’s hear them.” He layered several and did some quick panning stuff and played them back with everything. I was moved nearly to tears by how powerful, present, crunchy, tonally ideal what I was hearing come out of those control room speakers was. It’s everything previous recordings weren’t. Previous producers had been so interested in their own agenda for creating something so socially different and desiring to steer so far away from the “mainstream” or “typical” guitar arrangement implementation that I had never been satisfied with what we had. We finally had the crunchy “wall of guitar” tone I also thought we needed for the chorus. We went on to give the next song similar treatment where necessary. Hours later we did finish with the rhythm parts. There were some clean and some overdriven lead parts they wanted to do, but it was time to call it a night. I was coming down with a cold and really feeling the effects for the first time that evening as we finished up. I wasn’t sure what their opinion of my playing was at this point. I’d given up trying to impress though. They’d been around the block more times than I had, they’d seen some players that I wouldn’t compare to and I was OK with that. I’d done my part, and I was feeling the emotion and passion in our music like when we’d first written it again. That was coming through in my playing I think to some extent too, so I had no complaints about the process. Kyle & Zig had worked hard for me/us tonight and been flexible enough to try something that was against their better judgment and learned something too, as had I. I hadn’t used my amp’s dirty channel in a long time. I’d been strictly pedal-driven overdrive and distortion tones through her clean channel. I was even pleasantly surprised at what she’s capable of to the degree that I’d made up my mind to try modifying my setup when I get back to use the dirty channel over my Line 6 DM4 pedal. All I may need is something to boost the signal for solos. It was about 9pm when I got home, tired, in need of some Tylenol, and ready to veg in front of the bube tube for a couple hours until I went to bed. I went to bed trying not to think too much about the day’s progress and what was left to do tomorrow. It was a Saturday so I had to be there at 10am. I woke up approximately a half-hour before I needed to be there. It was a quick shower and throwing on whatever was at the top in the dresser drawers before I rushed out the door. A package of cold Pop Tarts was in my jeans pocket, and a leftover slice of pizza that I snagged from the dining room table hung from my mouth as I fiddled for my keys to the door to my car. Tom Petty seemed to be playing on every station as I sped my way over to the studio in the morning fog. I got there late. I hate being late and was ready to apologize when I realized I was in the basement before anyone had come down from upstairs. I waited for about 15 minutes reading a Fender catalog they had their from their Sophia purchase several days ago before Kyle came down to start. We tweaked some lead parts that weren’t solos, but just colorful riffs for the choruses of one song, and tracked me through the Mesa for variety, playing the root “A” chord several octaves higher than the rhythm guitars as they changed chords, just for a little extra punch and activity in the last few measures of the song. Then we tracked some clean, heavy reverberated melodic single-note stuff on the other song during the verses. I was only there maybe two and a half hours before we were done. As I was leaving Kyle asked me if there was any way he could borrow my amp for a little while. Having a backup solution I said that wouldn’t be a problem. I think this is going to work out just fine, I remember thinking. I still think so. It’s a completely different experience than my previous studio endeavors. I think this was more representative of what it would be like if a label was paying for the process, frankly, except maybe without the blown speaker. We’re going to do a full-fledged radio promo campaign with at least one, maybe both of these songs. We’ll see how it goes. I have high hopes, and that’s saying a lot for me, because I’m generally a cynic. It’s certainly an experience I’ll take with me and won’t ever forget. And I look forward to posting the finished product here for your listening pleasure and posting frequent updates as to how the new songs help us with booking and how they progress with radio.
Bazooka-Joe made it so at 12:45 PM
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