We all got together to set up the guitar and bass sounds, and Dave retuned the toms a couple of times, and we swapped out the SM 57/58 tom mics for some small diaphragm condensers, and I had to take that 4033 off the bass drum to use it on one of the guitar amps. This mic is sounds excellent on guitar amps. We set up another Large diaphragm condenser for the bass drum. It’s not ideal, but workable. We also tried an SM57 on the bass drum, but we all favored the condenser.
Also Dave brought his own cymbals and hi-hat. They seem to fit more of the style we are playing. My K customs are a little dark and more jazzy sounding than Dave’s Vintage As and his Custom A crash which are very Rock and Roll!
I realized that I was so caught up in the process that I forgot to snap some pics. So basically here is what we have going on. I have a basement with a living room that is carpeted. This is where the drums are, and also Ron has the board and recording rig set up in this room. Also there is an office and a bedroom all carpeted, as well as a large unfinished section of the basement that has concrete walls on three sides and concrete floor. We used to rehearse at my house and KC would mention that the thick carpeting kills his tone, so we set his amps in the unfinished section of the basement for a more lively sound. I set my bass amp up in the bedroom that is through the office with the ability to have 3 doors closed for separation.
For the bass I used one of the available large diaphragm condensers on the top left speaker of a 4×12 cab (ampeg V4) about 12 inches away and set it to a cardioid pattern. Also I activated the 10dB attenuator. The amp is an old 60s tube driven Ampeg b25b – great sounding bass amp. Simultaneously I ran direct through a Tech 21 SansAmp DI, but I bypassed the gain stage. I had the effect “stomped” on but I was only using it for the EQ section and not the gain that most people use it for. I personally still felt that it sounded artificial and I just wanted a good clean DI signal that I could alter in the mix with software modelers later if I choose to. Although I most likely won’t use it at all, but it’s nice to get just in case.
For the guitars, KC played through an old 50s Gibson GA20t 1×12 combo amp and simultaneously through a more modern Savage Macht 6 1×12 combo amp. They were set up on side by side on a rug in between my weight bench (that never gets use). The Savage on the left miced with the AT 4033 with the 10dB attenuator activated about 6 inches away from the center of the speaker. The GA20t was miced with both an SM57 on axis about 1.5 inches away from the grill pointing towards the edge of the dustcap and speaker cone, and also about 18 inches back I placed another large diaphragm condenser set up in a cardioid pattern with the 10dB attenuator activated.
I also ordered a cheap headphone mixer, since we were going to try to isolate our amps in different rooms. A headphone mixer was the only way we could all play together and effectively hear each other and ourselves. Not only that, but I got one that could give four independent headphone mixes. How sweet is that?? Now if the Dave needs to hear more bass drum in his headphone mix, but KC needs more snare, and I need to hear my bass louder, it can all be done with a twist of some knobs on the great Mackie.
Once we were all set up, we quickly ran through a couple tunes to get an idea of what we would sound like to disk. I quickly realized that it will require quite an adjustment to get used to playing this way through headphones. KC, the guitar player couldn’t play that well – he thought he was playing a banjo because he couldn’t “feel” the sustain in his guitar.
After playing back some of the recording, we were all quite impressed with the separation we had having the amps in the different rooms. I thought there would be at least a little bleed from the drum mics, but we heard nothing, or almost nothing. That is good. That way if we need to overdub the guitar or bass parts we won’t run into issues with the drum tracks.
One thing we all need to do is get headphone extension cables. We were all crammed around the headphone amp, so it was kind cramped in that sense, but at least we were able to run some test tracks and hear it work out.
That night I was pretty excited and couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up listening to the tracks and made a rough mix in Logic:
Here is one of the songs. keep in mind these were quick tests. We didn’t even know we would get to that point, and it was getting late, so the songs are rushed (tempo), mistakes were made, and we didn’t even tune first, but it was all just a test anyway. Next time we’ll work on keeping the song tight and adjust to playing through headphones.
Song file:
Click here to hear the recording from this session.