Recording Guitars with Dead Soul Revival

Recording Guitars with Dead Soul Revival

If you’ve been following my “first single release” journey for my new band deadsoulrevival.com you know I’ve been examining how we recorded our upcoming release. Today let’s talk about recording guitars and some ideas you can use yourself.

As a guitar player myself recording guitars is a skill that I have spent  practically my whole life exploring.  Having said that it’s important to remember to always be open to try different methods. In other words it’s easy to get stuck in your ways. 

I treat my guitars and amps as tools. Not investments. Whatever it takes to get the tone I want is the right way in my book. If that means modding the guitar or whatever it is so be it.

Let’s start with the pick. It can and does make a difference. I always have a player try out a few different type picks to see which one suits their tone the best. Sounds minor but worth exploring.  For the last few years I’ve been using Tortex yellow or green with the pointy tip. They are a little on the harder side but have a little give.

In the past I’ve used a variety of amps for my main tone, sometimes a blend of a couple. These have included Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifiers, Marshalls, Parks, and Laneys. Before we started recording these songs I got my hands on a Kemper.

After shooting out real amps versus the Kemper I decided to roll with the Kemper. I’ve used amp plugins in the the past for supplemental parts but never for my meat and bones main tone.

In the past this was mostly because of the feel of the non tube amps. The Kemper however is different. For me, it has all the feel of a real amp. The thing I really like is the speed at which I can experiment with different tones for different songs. I don’t own an Uberschall or an Orange but I have used them extensively.  They fit these songs better than what I have tube amp wise.

Years ago I might have second guessed myself on decisions like these. Nowadays I believe in making a decision and unless there is some major reason to change, stick with it. It makes life easier. Guitar players can be a bit neurotic. This is a gift and a curse.

I’ve used two guitars based on tone and tuning. For the songs in Drop C or D Standard I used my early 80’s Les Paul Standard with an Evertune.  It has a Full Shred in the bridge position. I believe it has a JB in the neck. This guitar fits nicely into a mix without much tweaking of the tone after the fact.

For the songs in Drop C# I’m using an ESP LTD with an Evertune as well.  This guitar is stock and has worked out great. I’m impressed.

Usually I will record a DI with the amp tone as a fail safe in case I decide to change the tone later.  As I went on with this project I trusted the tone I was getting enough that I did’t bother with the DI.

I’m going direct from the Kemper via a digital SPDIF cable into Pro Tools. This way getting back to my tone is a snap. No worrying about preamp levels when I decide add to a part later, etc.

The only trick there is making sure the Kemper is setup to the same sample rate as your session and knowing that you need to set your DAW to use the Kemper as the Master Clock. At first I couldn’t figure out why my tone sounded a little off. This is the reason. You don’t want your DAW trying to do sample rate conversion of your tone as it’s recorded.

Next time I’ll get into more of the nitty gritty of cutting tracks and things you’ll want to keep in mind when dialing in your tone…

For more about recording guitars check out my course the Sound Visualization Method.

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