How Much Gain Should You Record With?

I've went back and forth on this issue forever. Every rock guitar player on the planet loves lots and lots of gain. I'm no different when I'm sitting in the guitar seat. However, I love the sound of a rock guitar with the gain pulled back a little bit when it comes to recording. I've had problems with too much gain simply making things sound ?not quite right?. Well, Wagener did not give a damn about the gain thing. In fact, it wasn't even an issue. He plugged in the guitar player and gave him plenty of gain to hit the various pinch harmonics throughout the song.

Chandler mic preamps were a favorite of Wagener's for recording electric guitar.

He seamed much more concerned with giving the guitar player enough gain to be comfortable tracking the take than he was about whatever bad stuff the gain may do to the tone. I'm now a convert. I will almost always pick making the musician comfortable over the tone because a comfortable musician in most cases will play much better. This is a big lesson. I tried this out recently while recording a local hard rock band this week. I gave the guitar player everything he wanted and he played great. So piss on the rules, make the musician happy.

Guitar Tone Settings

I was very curious about the way the guitars were set as far as tone was concerned. I wanted to see how the big boys who loved the sound of the Royer were doing it. It turns out that (as you'll see in the pictures) all the amps had the grills off. This brightened the tone considerably. Also, the amps were set to be fairly aggressive. If you stood in the room (which blew your head off) the amps were fairly bright. They cut nicely. I would not call the amp sound in the room ?warm? by any stretch of the imagination (even though I don't use the W A R M word anyway).

Royer R121 Ribbon Microphone

It seams that almost everyone loves the sound of these mics on electric guitar. I had owned one for about a year when I attended the Wagener workshop and I never fell in love with them, but I certainly like them for certain things. I realized that the tone of the guitar does not have to be nearly as bright and fizzy as I often make it. In fact, I sat back and watched Wagener do his thing. The Royers do something amazing on electric guitar. The add what I call ?girth?. They make the guitar sound like an obese woman looks (I don't usually notice fat guys for some reason). That's the best way I can describe it. It makes the tone super thick and adds this dimension in the low mids that astronomical sounding.

Balancing Out The Royers With DI's

The sound of the Royers is mega cool, but it has a character that may not be ideal for every single situation. The tone can be too big in the lower half of the guitar sound. This explains the DI's had a lot more fizz to them (but not too much) that gave the tone an added dimension. Wagener said the DI's do everything that the sound from the mics didn't do.

Sennheiser MD 409 On The Engl

Just to add an additional flavor to the mix, a dynamic microphone, the Sennheiser 409 was used on the Engl amp. The Engl has a very modern mid scooped high gain tone. For some of the modern stuff, this amp would just kill and kill and kill. Very impressive! This amp has a character that certainly wouldn't be right for every song, but a little of it mixed with a Plexi tone, for example, may be absolutely perfect. This amp / mic combo was a nice contrast to the other tones listed.

Tons Of Guitar Tone Options

Wagener set up quite an elaborate rig for recording guitars. You have to remember that he is a mega engineer, but he's a super mega producer. This means that he's in the business of making records that effect people more so than simply capturing huge tones (which he also does). When overdubbing the musicians will want to be creative and try new things. It's up to Wagener to have a very flexible system at his disposal to adapt to what the guitar player wants to do almost immediately. How do you do it? Here's how!

Channel #1 ? Randall Module ? Nice hard rock tone ? Royer R121 microphone

Channel #2 ? Randall Module ? Something cleaner that contrasts Channel #1 ? Royer R121 microphone

Channel #3 ? DI left side of Randall cabinet

Channel #4 ? DI right side of Randall cabinet

Channel #5 ? Engl Amplifier with Sennheiser dynamic microphone

From the cockpit in the control room, Wagener had all his amps just a few feet away so that he could tweak a setting anytime he needed. He had the channels listed above on his fader and they all combined to create one track. Because he had tremendous isolation between his control room and live room, he could crank up the amps to the doom setting and hear the exact recorded tone in his monitors. This is something I dream of having someday.

By simply playing with the faders the tonal options here were unreal! Normally, I'm not a fan of guitar DI's but I must admit that the Randalls are the best sounding DI's I've heard on guitar. The interesting thing is the XLR output comes from the cabinet, not the head. Weird! Of course, the DI's were never used by themselves. They were used to add SOMETHING to the tone of the guitar. Just as discusses in the clean guitar article, by adding something stupid (in this case a guitar DI) we can come up with something much bigger and better in the end.

Place Careful Attention To Phase On All These Guitar Channels

It's important to note that extreme attention was put into making sure that all 5 of these channels were phase aligned. If they were not meticulously positioned so that they were all in phase, the whole thing would go to hell pretty quickly.

Don't Forget The Guitar Picks

Wagener had this huge assortment of guitar picks. He said the he tried to keep a guitar pick from each player he recorded. Many of the guitar players Wagener has worked with have their own signature picks made for them. Picks are a BIG DEAL when it comes to the tone. Wagener had at least 5 different picks sitting out at all times. He wanted options. He switched picks every time he wanted a different tone. It was a bigger deal that I had every realized but it made a huge difference on the tone. Don't bother getting a mega fancy preamp collection if you don't have a nice pick collection first.

Using Celestion Vintage 30s but switching to G12H30s

Wagener said that he was happy with the Vintage 30 Celestions, but had decided to switch his cabinets over to the G12H30. I just bought a pair of those a little over a year ago as they came extremely highly recommended from good friend of mine, Bob Glastetter, who is our local guitar tone junky. By the way, make sure you find the local guitar tone idiot in your area. He will be a great friend!

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