I'm new at this---did a tech session with my band tonight at a studio where we'll be putting in some hours this weekend. We did a test run thru a few weeks ago and I ran into a twin to an isolation box (actually Podxt signal split, direct to board and into the twin, just to hedge our bets.) Sound was pretty good then but the box had a Boogie 12" speaker in it and it wasn't my cup of tea. So tonight I brought my 15" Weber Cali in an open back cab. It sounded absolutely awful in the iso box (I use it live and like it a lot) so we went back to the Mesa. The sound was so thumpy---every picked string exploded with a thump. Really crappy.
Like I said, this is new to me. Are there some simple commonly known facts about iso boxes that I need to learn? Like that a 15" speaker doesn't work in one?
I was hoping that this would be a huge improvement but it's totally unworkable.
Iso Speaker Box
Moderator: Shoshanah Marohn
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Jon Light (deceased)
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- Joined: 4 Aug 1998 11:00 pm
- Location: Saugerties, NY
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Chris Tarrow
- Posts: 477
- Joined: 27 Mar 2006 1:01 am
- Location: Maplewood, NJ
If the issue is isolation, what works a lot better is to track the DI only and then use a re-amp box to record the track through your amplifier later in the room.
None of those speaker boxes really sound great, especially with something like steel where the sound of the cabinet and the ambience are so important.
There are a few good reamp boxes out there, I have this one:
http://www.reamp.com
it has worked flawlessly.
Good luck!
None of those speaker boxes really sound great, especially with something like steel where the sound of the cabinet and the ambience are so important.
There are a few good reamp boxes out there, I have this one:
http://www.reamp.com
it has worked flawlessly.
Good luck!
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Jon Light (deceased)
- Posts: 14336
- Joined: 4 Aug 1998 11:00 pm
- Location: Saugerties, NY
Thanks for sharing your experience. I've got so little studio time under my belt that I never know what is normal, what is not right. After a grueling weekend in the studio I'm still not sure what's what. But the bottom line is that everything tracked acceptably ok and that the weakest part of the process (after the picker) is in the headphone system. I had to just go on faith that if it sounded good on playback and if nothing was changed going into the next take then no matter how crappy it sounded in the cans, it was alright.
I can't say that it did wonders for my playing. By the end of 22 hours of work I was starting to get a handle on it all (and starting to find how I wanted my personal headphone mix) and wishing we could start all over again. And then I'd probably do it all differently, going with the reamp thing but by the time the meter was running I deemed it too late to start thinking about a different recording method.
Oh well.
I can't say that it did wonders for my playing. By the end of 22 hours of work I was starting to get a handle on it all (and starting to find how I wanted my personal headphone mix) and wishing we could start all over again. And then I'd probably do it all differently, going with the reamp thing but by the time the meter was running I deemed it too late to start thinking about a different recording method.
Oh well.
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Chris Tarrow
- Posts: 477
- Joined: 27 Mar 2006 1:01 am
- Location: Maplewood, NJ
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Ben Strano
- Posts: 39
- Joined: 7 Jan 2009 11:04 pm
- Location: Nashville
I built a box a couple of years ago that doesn't sound like a box at all. The key is to make it big enough for the amp to breath in. My box is 6x4x3 and weighs about 750 lbs. Built to the "golden ratio" so that there are no real problem frequencies to speak of. Spent about 700 bucks on lumber alone... but it is a beast.
I have ran a 100 watt marshall through a 2 12 mesa closed the lid and had a conversation right next to it at a very comfortable level.
It breaks down into six pieces just by unscrewing eight bolts. Each piece can be moved by one guy except the base which weighs about 175 lbs and is awkward as can be.
My whole goal was to be able to do guitar overdubs in my house and not have the neighbors know I was running a studio right next door. Not a single one of them ever heard a peep.
Here is a silly animation we did while doing the final assembly...
I have ran a 100 watt marshall through a 2 12 mesa closed the lid and had a conversation right next to it at a very comfortable level.
It breaks down into six pieces just by unscrewing eight bolts. Each piece can be moved by one guy except the base which weighs about 175 lbs and is awkward as can be.
My whole goal was to be able to do guitar overdubs in my house and not have the neighbors know I was running a studio right next door. Not a single one of them ever heard a peep.
Here is a silly animation we did while doing the final assembly...
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Jon Light (deceased)
- Posts: 14336
- Joined: 4 Aug 1998 11:00 pm
- Location: Saugerties, NY
Ha.
Man, what an atrocity that session was. I ended up quitting the band, in no small part because of the divisions that emerged there.
We did some twenty plus hours of tracking at basically no charge because the drummer worked there (it's a huge back room at an equipment rental company that has aspirations to expand into a studio. The owner is an asshole who would walk into the room in the middle of a take and we had to say "gee, it's cool that you did that, bro"). And at no charge, I still don't know that we got our money's worth.
The engineer was a friend of the other guys, just out of Berklee. Tough gig for him, coming into an unfamiliar half-assed project studio and trying to make it happen. The biggest liability was the headphone system. By the end I came to realize that half the distortion I was hearing in the cans was isolated to the subsystem and wasn't printing. Actually, we already knew that via playbacks but it was impossible to play with the raunch being fed to my ears. I kept backing off the volume pedal and the result is some tracks that are barely printed. With crap tone.
All of this done in 50 degree room temperatures with an overhead gas heater being turned on between takes. There is nobody who could have kept a steel in tune under that scenario (not an excuse for anything---just another obstacle to deal with).
I'm pretty disgusted with the whole experience. The difference between me &them---I am 55. They are 25. They look at a situation like this and say 'hey, it could work'. I look at it and say 'it won't work'. I was right and I knew it from the moment we started. But I deferred to their enthusiasm. That won't happen again.
Their iso box is about the size of yours, Ben, although not as heavily built. It's on wheels and rolls from room to room. I'll need a lot more experience with this before I can know how I feel about boxes. The impression was that the sound got way too fat and muddy in there. Loss of clean mids.
But a lot of that impression may be tainted by the headphone issue. Playback was always much better than it seemed in the cans.
All post production was done without me so I don't know if they used the iso tracks, the direct tracks (from the POD), or a blend. I'll be hearing the mastered project sometime soon. Although I'm no longer involved, they tell me it sounds great. I'm seriously skeptical.
Man, what an atrocity that session was. I ended up quitting the band, in no small part because of the divisions that emerged there.
We did some twenty plus hours of tracking at basically no charge because the drummer worked there (it's a huge back room at an equipment rental company that has aspirations to expand into a studio. The owner is an asshole who would walk into the room in the middle of a take and we had to say "gee, it's cool that you did that, bro"). And at no charge, I still don't know that we got our money's worth.
The engineer was a friend of the other guys, just out of Berklee. Tough gig for him, coming into an unfamiliar half-assed project studio and trying to make it happen. The biggest liability was the headphone system. By the end I came to realize that half the distortion I was hearing in the cans was isolated to the subsystem and wasn't printing. Actually, we already knew that via playbacks but it was impossible to play with the raunch being fed to my ears. I kept backing off the volume pedal and the result is some tracks that are barely printed. With crap tone.
All of this done in 50 degree room temperatures with an overhead gas heater being turned on between takes. There is nobody who could have kept a steel in tune under that scenario (not an excuse for anything---just another obstacle to deal with).
I'm pretty disgusted with the whole experience. The difference between me &them---I am 55. They are 25. They look at a situation like this and say 'hey, it could work'. I look at it and say 'it won't work'. I was right and I knew it from the moment we started. But I deferred to their enthusiasm. That won't happen again.
Their iso box is about the size of yours, Ben, although not as heavily built. It's on wheels and rolls from room to room. I'll need a lot more experience with this before I can know how I feel about boxes. The impression was that the sound got way too fat and muddy in there. Loss of clean mids.
But a lot of that impression may be tainted by the headphone issue. Playback was always much better than it seemed in the cans.
All post production was done without me so I don't know if they used the iso tracks, the direct tracks (from the POD), or a blend. I'll be hearing the mastered project sometime soon. Although I'm no longer involved, they tell me it sounds great. I'm seriously skeptical.