guitar reamping box

[TimWaldvogel]

As a music producer I have noticed the classic rock kinda gang it's not really open to any suggetions from the producer. 3 different classic rock bands we recorded don't understand no matter how many times you tell them... That a mic will NOT pick up the exact tone they here with their ears coming out of their amp. Their tone is their tone and they just don't feel like listening to the guys they came to to record it. I wanna reamp so I can do their songs justice. Not pick up their tube screamer with all knobs at 10 in front of a Marshall  with the patch cable jumpering their channels at such a loud volume you can't monitor it for them correcty. I like reamping. The songs sound great when they are done in the context of a mix

[wavley]

As a music producer I have noticed the classic rock kinda gang it's not really open to any suggetions from the producer. 3 different classic rock bands we recorded don't understand no matter how many times you tell them... That a mic will pick up the exact tone they here with their ears coming out of their amp. Their tone is their tone and they just don't feel like listening to the guys they came to to record it. I wanna reamp so I can do their songs justice. Not pick up their tube screamer with all knobs at 10 in front of a Marshall  with the patch cable jumpering their channels at such a loud volume you can't monitor it for them correcty. I like reamping. Te songs soun great when they are done cause I actually was able to put it in the context of a mix. Best piece of eat ie used in a long time with my edcor transformer !! Will post pix asap   

Alright, now I was defending you a bit because I do a bit of re-amping myself but this is one of the most ignorant statements I've ever read, of course I thought I was a producer that knew everything when I was 21 too.

Your job as a producer/engineer is to capture the artistic intention of the band period, you work for them, not the other way around, they tell YOU what to do.  Maybe it's because these guys have been playing music for as long as you have been around so that they KNOW that a mic is not the same as your ears and they KNOW there is a difference between being in a room with a screaming Marshall and recording direct.  Recently I recorded a band that used all amp modelers, not even good ones, everything except the drums were direct, it was a major pain for me to set up six different mixes for their cans.  I suggested it might sound better if they used real amps, they like their modelers...  I think the drums sound great because there is no bleed in the mics but the guitars sound like crap, they love the guitars.  Now I can impose my will while mixing and re-amp the guitars through a 64 Super Reverb OR I can listen to the band and make the record that they want to hear.  My job is to keep them on track and make suggestions that I think will help them, but in the end it is their decision because it is their art.

You can't possible be comparing a mic to ears!  For one, I know what mics sound good on my amps and in what positions because I have spend years figuring it out, now if I'm going to a strange studio I am open to suggestions about placement and mic selection, but knowing my rig is a nice place to start and if I tell somebody that a certain mic sounds good in a certain place and he is a good engineer then it will save him time experimenting and give him a baseline for what I want to hear, because it is MY tone.  An e609 is not a U87 and vice versa and I think the mic/ear analogy is bull, the mic could be in a null or a standing wave in the room, the guy could have three jensens and one greenback speaker and he wants you to mic the greenback, you could be standing in a flutter echo and the mic not, it's an over simplification of our job and you are over selling your contribution, imposing your will, and proving that you do not understand the nature of recording.

Recording my guitar is not about endless options at mixdown, it's about recording MY guitar.  A good engineer can sculpt a mix and retain the integrity and sound of the artist.

[TimWaldvogel]

No. Honestly. These guys didn't know a dang thing lol. I understand what your talking about as far as me working for them. But these guys just didn't have a clue about recording and understanding how a mic captures sound. They can't complain about it sounding like poo when I am not allowed to produce their stuff. It was distorting the mic and just plain horrible. I tried to tell them but thy wanted me to shut up and stop doing my job to save them some money in studio time... And I am their employee I get that, but if my boss gives me a turd and told me to polish it gold... Well I'd tell him it's not possible but ill do the best i can. Which is what I did. I have yet to get a classic rock band to come in and let me help them. Maybe I need to do something probono so I can make something worthy of a demo classic rock song   

[wavley]

Mythbusters proved that you can, in fact, polish a turd...

Try a different mic, use the pad on your pre-amp, use a different pre-amp, move the mic, people record Marshalls on eleven every day.

Your job is to know how to do this, not convince the band of what will make your job the easiest.

To use myself as an example because I can't speak for anybody else.  I haven't spent the last 25 years of my life learning guitar (I'm 35), acquiring gear, going to school, and making a career out of electronics so that I can build and modify my equipment to make it sound exactly how I want to let somebody run my guitar through whatever crappy amp he has on hand while I'm not there to have any input.  If I don't Leo Fender, Jim Marshall, and Pete Traynor have the last word on how I sound, why would I let YOU have the last word?

I think that re-amping is a great tool for polishing a turd, I really do, I think it makes for some interesting sounds, but if I walked into a studio and the engineer said "I changed all your guitar sounds to my vision of how they should sound because you don't know what you're doing"   At the very least, he wouldn't get paid. 

I LOVE technology, but it steps out of reality sometimes, it's nice to have options, but really how "real" is it to have a dozen Fairchild 670 emulations running, how many studios on earth have a dozen $40K limiters on hand?  It's a blessing, but often too many options lead to a mix that has no character.

Bad Brains "Pay to cum" was recorded in a warehouse with a pizza box taped to the kick head because it broke, that 7" is AWESOME, what if somebody had gone in with SPL drum exchanger and fixed that after the fact?  Would it have captured the angst any better?

[TimWaldvogel]

I truy don't change the sound. Just raise or lower the gain by snippets and alter eq to be less bright at times

[TimWaldvogel]

And  I love the mythbusters. Haha they couldn't polish any old turd
though. 

[ashcat_lt]

I'm not the least bit interested in arguing the pros and cons of re-amping.  I have and will do it on occasion.  Different strokes for different folks and all that.  The point I'm trying to make is that many people are doing it and many of them have a poor understanding of what it takes which can lead them to purchase a rather expensive box which may not be necessary or applicable to their particular situation.

Keep in mind that when we talk about "re-amping" it doesn't always involve a guitar, and also often doesn't even involve an amplifier.  People use this same technique (and the boxes) to interface recorders and mixers with pedals and other Hi-Z inputs all the time.  

I can definitely dig the fact that the input-Z used in the recording process may not be the same as it would if the guitar was plugged directly into the amp.  Most active DI's - whether standalone units or those built into mic pres or recording interfaces - usually present 1M to the pickups.  Many common (especially vintage) amplifiers will be lower than this.  On the other hand, most passive DI's connected to typical mic pres will reflect an impedance lower than might be found at an amp's input - especially when running the "parallel output" to an actual amplifier for monitoring purposes.  If we know for sure what we're going to be re-amping into, we can take steps to present the appropriate impedance at the time of recording.  I have a cable with a 1M resistor soldered between the tip and sleeve on one end.  In parallel with the 1M DI input, my guitar sees 500K.  The difference is subtle, but real.

On the other hand, we're really just talking about a hi-pass filter.  A fairly complex hi-pass filter to be sure, but not much more.  I've got plenty of these in the box.  I'm not going to step into the hornet's nest by saying that you can get the exact same response using EQ plugins.  I know (from experience) that you can get perfectly acceptable results this way, however.  When there's a doubt, I lean in the direction of capturing as much of the treble as possible and rolling it off if necessary on the way out of the box.

Keep in mind, too, that just because we're capturing a "safety copy" for later re-amping doesn't mean we can't actually have an amp in the room while recording the track.  The guitar and guitarist can react to the moving air as per normal, but now we've got the option to mangle the sound if necessary.

Again, all I'm really trying to say is that the re-amp process itself can quite often be accomplished by way of a simple cable.  I am always flabbergasted when people go out and buy a re-amp box or some expensive transformer to build one before even trying without it just becuase they don't understand the "impedance mismatch" issue.  As mentioned above (like 4 pages ago) there are problems that these boxes can help to resolve, but they are situational, don't apply in every case, and can often be adressed in other ways.

[DougH]

I re-amp all the time.

Most of the time it's because my bass player currently lives in another state and he is forced to record direct and I like to get his bass sound with a mic in a room, it's not as nice as when we can get him here and run a nice tube di WITH an amp, but it gets the job done.

I also re-amp drums, vocals, drum machines... often in conjunction with my cistern as an echo chamber.

Depending on what sounds better, I use an old passive dod DI in reverse or the behringer ultra DI (which is surprisingly good sounding) but usually it's just the passive box, sometimes running through the tube buffer of my Anthony Demaria DI.

I don't tend to re-amp guitar because I'm a guitar player with a bunch of amps and I don't mind just playing it again with the right amp/right mic, but I can see why you would want to do it.  Much like the pickup simulator circuit, I do like the sound of a transformer in the path over just plugging my MOTU into an amp.

It's never gonna be the same is a guitar in a room, not just for the complex electrical interaction, but the interaction of a wood guitar in a room with high spl and the performance factor... you always rock harder with a cranked amp!

Edit..  Oh yeah, and what R.G said     

I only re-amp out of necessity, the necessity to mangle things beyond recognition and make emailed bass parts sound better, not for endless guitar possibilities.

That makes a lot of sense. I don't have a problem with particular tools per se, just don't like how they are used at times. I was screwed on one song by a producer who thought he knew better what a good guitar sound was, and mangled my track completely with a lot of fakey "distortion" and reverb etc and it sounded like complete crap. It was a session I did to back up a friend so it's not a big issue AFAIC. And I honestly don't have a problem with others taking my work and adding their own spin to it- *if* they know what they are doing. BTW, this guy was an excellent producer/arranger otherwise and helped me a lot with some great ideas. Unfortunately, the great ideas were lost on that one song by the horrible sound because sonically he had a tin ear as far as guitar sound is concerned.

Recording my guitar is not about endless options at mixdown, it's about recording MY guitar.  A good engineer can sculpt a mix and retain the integrity and sound of the artist.

I agree 100%. And part of where I'm coming from is as my own "producer" for home recording. I have no need for "safety tracks" or redoing things later.

[TimWaldvogel]

My first need for a saftey track came along when I made a demo and was unable to track all the guitar in one day. I never USED to have the luxery of a quiet enviroment without people coming in and out all day. Tht and sometime the track is recorded perfectly, the timing is right and it just works with the song. And sometime you mus experiement to find out what sounds great. Before reamping everything was great. But now everything is grrrrrrrreeeat !!
I am basically gonna start runnin a DI into the interface and take the other output to the amp and record their amp. Then I can use the saftey track for layering.
Granted most my clients are not looking for their cd to sound like they do live with imperfections and a single guitar track kind of sound. They are looking for the overproduced compressed music they listen to in their cars around town. Something to get exited about. And for that I usually record one guitar track with their tone and layer it back with a little less treble and less gain so they can get a huge sounding track. So I will say reamping is not for everybody. But it IS for my studio. 

[jacobyjd]

I don't reamp often, but when I do, I reamp with Dos Equis software.

There are tons of cheap/free solutions out there that take care of all the issues an analog box could solve, plus some. I could see building one for personal use, but I wouldn't expect it to sell like hotcakes.

Still, it's best to use the real track you've got for all the benefits previously mentioned. 

[wavley]

Sorry, I didn't mean to go on a big rant flaming you and all...

Sometimes I get things stuck in my craw.  I've had it happen a few times where I recorded something I was proud of just to have somebody mangle it beyond recognition after the fact.

I understand the safety track thing a bit, for a while I was taking a di and a mic signal for my guitar (after the amp, another virtue of the behringer di) and the bass, but I never ended up using the di track of my guitar at all in the final mix and if I wanted something to sound thicker then I would just record another track or twenty with different amps and guitars to get the sound I wanted.

Also, I have discovered the joy of ribbon mics, so it has lessened the need for thickening up things after the fact.

To each his own, I don't deny the power and usefulness of re-amping.  One of my favorite things is to run a drum machine track through my modded up Kalamazoo model one in a cistern with some space echo, crushed up tape saturation goodness.

[skrunk]

Keep in mind that when we talk about "re-amping" it doesn't always involve a guitar, and also often doesn't even involve an amplifier. People use this same technique (and the boxes) to interface recorders and mixers with pedals and other Hi-Z inputs all the time.

this is true.
I mostly use my pedals for processing line level signals coming from my DAW's audio interface or for live use with a laptop, not a guitar or amp in sight.
I've been wondering lately if it might be worth building or buying a reamp box for matching impedances, but from what I've read in this thread, there wouldn't really be much point?

so if I got this right....
2 things we're concerned with: level and impedance.
the level I can just turn down from the DAW, usually about -30dB seems to present the pedal with a usable level.
with regards impedance, I was wondering if I wasn't getting the best out of my pedals when presenting them with a low Z signal.

then I read this:

Many engineers don't have the working knowledge of electronics we do, and falsely assume there is something gained by converting a low impedance source to a hi impedance one, to run it into a hi impedance input, and "match" them.  A hi impedance input will happily accept a hi or low impedance source with no issues.  The only issues with audio signal impedance is running a hi impedance source (probably guitar) into a low impedance input (say, a 10K line input on a mixer, or passive DI), where you get tone suck from the pickups being loaded.

This is ignoring the rare fuzz face type effects that load the pickups, and a low impedance source (like a line in, or buffered guitar) will squash them.  For reamping with those, you'd want to add a series resistance, or go further and make a pickup simulator like the thing at AMZ. 

and this:

IMNSHO a reamp box is almost always unnecessary.

Your amp doesn't care what's plugged into it.  The important part of the guitar>amp interface is that the guitar's pickups see an appropriately Hi-Z load.  Presumably, you've already taken care of this.  This output of your interface is such Lo-Z that it can very easily drive any guitar amp. 

The output might be a little louder than what you'd get out of a passive guitar, but there are volume controls (either analog or digital) to compensate for this.

all of which makes good sense to me.
so impedance matching only matters when we're talking about the Z load a guitar's pick-ups may see or when plugging a guitar straight into a line level mixer (not that you would).

but would fuzz face type circuits (like say, my tonebenders?) benefit from something like the AMZ pick-up simulator if I'm running low Z, line level signals through them?

[edvard]

but would fuzz face type circuits (like say, my tonebenders?) benefit from something like the AMZ pick-up simulator if I'm running low Z, line level signals through them?

I believe that was the original impetus for the pick-up simulator.
That is, a way for FF's and similar boxes to be run satisfactorily from active pickups or buffers.
From AMZ: http://www.muzique.com/lab/pickups.htm

Effects circuit will respond differently to an input from a low impedance signal source such as an op-amp output than when driven directly from a guitar pickup. This can be especially evident with certain types of simple transistor circuits. The classic fuzz face is a good example of a circuit that has a low impedance input which produces a significantly different sound when connected to a guitar pickup than when it is preceded by a buffer or another effects box.

Note that doesn't mean the GPUS would magically revert your guitar tone to the way it was straight through, but at least it should prevent your fuzzbox from flipping out (like Fuzz Faces can do when presented with a low-Z signal).

[wavley]

but would fuzz face type circuits (like say, my tonebenders?) benefit from something like the AMZ pick-up simulator if I'm running low Z, line level signals through them?

I believe that was the original impetus for the pick-up simulator.
That is, a way for FF's and similar boxes to be run satisfactorily from active pickups or buffers.
From AMZ: http://www.muzique.com/lab/pickups.htm

Effects circuit will respond differently to an input from a low impedance signal source such as an op-amp output than when driven directly from a guitar pickup. This can be especially evident with certain types of simple transistor circuits. The classic fuzz face is a good example of a circuit that has a low impedance input which produces a significantly different sound when connected to a guitar pickup than when it is preceded by a buffer or another effects box.

Note that doesn't mean the GPUS would magically revert your guitar tone to the way it was straight through, but at least it should prevent your fuzzbox from flipping out (like Fuzz Faces can do when presented with a low-Z signal).

That pickup simulator is awesome.  I run buffers before mine and it totally sounds better now, I have the option to turn it off and plug my guitar straight into it if I feel that it's really critical to preserve my actual pickup tone when recording, but to be completely honest I'm too lazy to do it because it's so close enough for rock and roll that even a tone snob perfectionist like me thinks it sounds good the way it is. 

As a matter of fact, I re-amped an old Roland R-5 through my fuzz face, space echo, boomerang+ last night and really felt that it sounded great, not even thinking about the impedance matching aspect, but the center tap came in handy for tone shaping. 

[therecordingart]

This gadget is for people who are either overly obsessed with "tone" or want to endlessly twiddle with stuff after the fact, or both. I.e., for producers, not performers.

Record your track, get it the best you can, and move on, IMO.

Not to mention that this thing is pretty unnecessary, except possibly for converting from balanced to unbalanced line, if needed.

I've got something I wrote & recorded 20 years ago on a 4-track that I'm redoing for better fidelity and to include some other musicians on it. Listening back, it's not the greatest "tone" but the performance and feel more than make up for it. I don't even hear the "tone" when I listen to it any more. Performance trumps "tone"- every time... And I'm looking forward to redoing it and performing it even better.

I kind of agree because it seems like a twiddle box for guys with too much time on their hands, but I feel like I'm somewhat of an exception. I freelance out of a local commercial studio, but I don't want to spend hours away from my family recording guitar parts. I like being able to bounce back and forth between hanging out with the fam and playing guitar. If I split my guitar signal and record my guitar parts at home I can reamp at the studio later and I only have to worry about dialing in guitar sounds and not performances as well. Reamping is a necessity for me because I live in a townhouse and have a baby...can't crank the stacks here.

Oh...and my Firefly kicks insane amounts of ass and stands favorably next to the rest of the amps at the studio. That was a great way to spend less than $200!

[skrunk]

I'm still not quite sure what the benefit is though.
If your just sending a line signal (your recorded guitar track) into the amp, and impedance matching isn't really an issue in such a case, why bother?

I mean, as RG said, impedance matching only really counts when the pick-ups are in the equation, but once the guitar part has been recorded, that interaction is then out of the equation.
If it's just a case of matching levels, just send the amp an attenuated line signal.

I'd really like to A/B a line signal going into an amp with and without the reamp box and hear if there is any real benefit.

[wavley]

I'm still not quite sure what the benefit is though.
If your just sending a line signal (your recorded guitar track) into the amp, and impedance matching isn't really an issue in such a case, why bother?

I mean, as RG said, impedance matching only really counts when the pick-ups are in the equation, but once the guitar part has been recorded, that interaction is then out of the equation.
If it's just a case of matching levels, just send the amp an attenuated line signal.

I'd really like to A/B a line signal going into an amp with and without the reamp box and hear if there is any real benefit.

I do it for two reasons for the most part.

1.  Isolation-  My recording equipment is all in a rack and properly grounded within that rack, my guitar stuff is in a different circuit and all properly grounded... but when you mix the two=buzz, not always, but often enough to use isolation all of the time.  If I had more time and money then it would never be an issue, but I'm a working man with a basement studio that does the best he can to never record anyone but himself, needless to say... it doesn't make me any money, quite the opposite.

2. Sound-  While you could argue that the amp seeing the transformer is more like a pickup and reacts better than seeing an op amp, that's not my reality... my amps see op amps, caps, and transistors on the input because of buffers, space echoes, boomerang+'s and stuff.  On occasion I plug a guitar straight into an amp, dime everything, and rock out, and I would never dream of reamping a track like this, I would just play it again, and why not, it's fun!  Last night I reamped a drum machine track, I intentionally saturated the transformer in my passive DI running in reverse, ran it through my pedal rig, and then intentionally saturated the transformers and tube buffer of my ADL DI, and again in my Neumann V476b's.  The resulting sound was HUGE, dirty, compressed and up front in the mix.  Now this is an extreme example and I'm not prone to extremes all the time, but I think it makes my point as a tone shaping weapon.

I think someone pointed out that a lot of people that make these "rules" about what you should use to record don't actually know anything about electronics.  We do know about electronics so we should use reason when we do things.  I'm a fan of re-amping and using transformers to do so, but if you read my earlier posts, I kind of tore into some poor guy for what I felt was abuse of the client/engineer trust and artistic integrity.   

There are reasons to do it and reasons that say it wouldn't matter, much like anything else in the studio, it all depends on the situation.

[skrunk]

cheers wavley, that's interesting.
I can understand how you might want to use it creatively with an amp, as you do.
I suppose I'm just wondering if using one between my audio interface and my pedals is going to allow me to get any more from them.
I might just try put one together and see if it offers any creative possibilities, which is all I'm after really.

[petemoore]

  Great big 'ol amp in a little room...rediculous.
  Try making that work, it will.
  Doesn't matter unless it matters, IME these guys want what they want and even if they knew what that was they wouldn't know what to try to figure out to get it.
  Magic of amplifer...lol...yea if you figure there are hundreds of ways to make it sound bad, room / hall [if you got a really big amp...outside pelease.
  Depends on the surfaces in the room and some room sound is nice, if dude's cranking his monster in order to make it growl, there's no way you're going to find a good place to put the mic because there isn't one.
  Usually hasty rushes take precedence over understanding or figureing...just use compresion etc. forget the time consuming process of actually citing examples...much less demonstrating.

[ashcat_lt]

I see threads about re-amping pop up every now and then around the various forums I frequent.  The OP is always one of two things:

A)  "I've never tried re-amping (either through an amp or a pedal) but I heard something about an impedance mismatch and somebody on the internet said something about this box..."

B)  "I've been re-amping for years and have always been satisfied, but somebody on the internet said something about this box, and now I wonder if I'm missing something."

The first I can almost understand.  My advice is to try it first without, because it's cheaper.

The second I don't really understand at all.

In both cases the correct answer is that the re-amp boxes out there are designed to help alleviate a few possible problems that you might run into in the re-amping process.  None of these problems are completely guaranteed to crop up in all - or even most - re-amping scenarios, and they all have other solutions.  If it ain't a problem, it ain't a problem, and if it sounds good it is good.