Getting a Great Guitar Sound Part 5

[Revan]

Musician in the Control Room?

For an electric guitarist, there is no better way to achieve a great sound than by sitting or standing next to the amp. There is an important interaction between the guitar's body and the vibrations set up by the amplifier. Increased and unique sustain qualities, feedback effects, and tone enhancement due to acoustic reinforcement only happen if you play next to your amp. When I listen to some of the newer rock records, I miss that sound.

In the recording studio, it may not be practical for the guitar player to be near his amp since the wide volume differences of all the sound sources in the same room (drums, bass, other guitars and singers) preclude the use of higher guitar amp levels during live band tracking sessions. In such cases the guitar amp or speaker cabinet is placed in an isolation booth for maximum control and separation. The guitarist can sit out in the studio with the drummer and the rest of the band or even in the control room with the producer and engineer, but he must rely on a good monitor mix to play along. In this scenario, the guitarist loses all sonic interaction between his guitar and amplifier, retaining only the basic tonal qualities of his amp.

When a player is remote from his amplifier, the amp top is typically set next to the guitarist and heavy-gauge cables connect it to the speaker cabinet. In the case of one-piece combo amps, running super-long guitar cords from the guitar to the amp is unacceptable since the distributed capacitance along the long cable acts as a high frequency roll-off filter on the guitar's delicate output signal. I recommend using a small buffer amplifier for this job that "conditions" or buffers the guitar's signal for long cable runs. The GCX Guitar Audio Switcher from Digital Music, is an effects and audio switching matrix, with a buffer for sending electric guitar signals to multiple amps at the same time. The GCX also reduces noise and loss of high frequencies from cabling.


Part 1 (Getting a Great Guitar Sound Part1) Part 2 (Getting a Great Guitar Sound Part 2) Part 3 (Getting a Great Guitar Sound Part 3) Part 4 (Getting a Great Guitar Sound Part 4) Part 5 (Getting a Great Guitar Sound Part 5)