Re-amping with Petrucci's ideas

While in the studio, Between the Buried and Me called up John Petrucci (on the phone.....i guess when you tour with dream theater, you can get JP's cell #) and asked him about what his techniques were with plug ins and mic placement to get his sound in the studio, and they used his ideas and suggestions for their tone on new record. Well, Jamie King, the guy who records BTBAM (among many others), is allowing my to bring in our amps and essentially re-amp our album using these techniques and plug-ins to see if it will produce an even greater tone......and I'm pretty stoked about that. Just thought I'd share. BTW, when we played with them last week, Paul was using a Mark V and Dustie was using a Roadster...tone was phenomenal! I would suggest checking out their new CD when it drops in October for some awesome guitar tone and even greater guitar playing!

-AJH

Hey! It would be great if you tell us how he reamp guitars. As far as I know, petrucci does not reamp anything. I only know one method to reamp, and I would be very interested to know others, so please, when you get your guitars reccorded, tell us about anything!

MesaENGR412 said:

While in the studio, Between the Buried and Me called up John Petrucci (on the phone.....i guess when you tour with dream theater, you can get JP's cell #) and asked him about what his techniques were with plug ins and mic placement to get his sound in the studio, and they used his ideas and suggestions for their tone on new record. Well, Jamie King, the guy who records BTBAM (among many others), is allowing my to bring in our amps and essentially re-amp our album using these techniques and plug-ins to see if it will produce an even greater tone......and I'm pretty stoked about that. Just thought I'd share. BTW, when we played with them last week, Paul was using a Mark V and Dustie was using a Roadster...tone was phenomenal! I would suggest checking out their new CD when it drops in October for some awesome guitar tone and even greater guitar playing!

-AJH

Click to expand...

Do share...

JP does not reamp his tones AFAIK...

Yeah, I don't think Petrucci reamps, but I'll see what I can find out. We are just reamping because we have already done the reamping process and have the clean guitar signal recorded for when we recorded the guitars for our cd in May.

Basically, to reamp the guitars, you need to run your guitar's signal into a Y splitter and take one signal to your guitar amp, and the other into somthing like this Radial Box:
http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.co...ProRMP-Passive-Reamping-Direct-Box?sku=153933.

Jamie used this box though--> http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.co...8V-Phantom-Power-Active-Direct-Box?sku=153904 .You just run the second, natural guitar signal into a channel on the mixer and record both the guitar amp signal and the natural (un-amplified!!) signal simultaneously when doing your guitar tracks.

Once you have everything recorded and edited to the way you like it, then, you run the natural recorded guitar signal back out of the board, through any amp and cab of your choice, and then re-record the guitar tracks by basically just hitting "play" and letting the tracks run. We still overdubbed a lot of the guitars on the main tracks, but, to build up the tone and mix and match amps, this saves a LOT of time and allows you to do infinite passes through whatever amps you can get your hands on to construct the ultimate sound you are looking for. You can do this for rhythms and leads, so that you can add in amps for lead work that you don't necessarily want for rhythm (we used a Marshall JMP-1 preamp for leads, ran direct into the board). Jamie is just going to reamp the Hughes and Kettner for us, which is what we used for the main basis of our tone, and just see what JP's ideas and recommendations do to the tone, which he did for BTBAM, and if it improves our tone then we'll mix that with the other two tracks we did in the reamping process (Bogner Uber and my Triple Rec) and go with that as our final master. Hope that helps with the reamping concept.

If I get up to the studio, I'll try and talk to Jamie and see if there's anything specific JP told them about mic placement and such that really stood out and helped the sound. Our other guitarist is taking the head over to him today so that he can reamp it sometime this week, and I won't be with him.

-AJH

hello mesaENGR412, not trying to crap on your thread or anything, but you are a bit mixed up on the reamping process.

you NEVER want to run a "y" cable out of your guitar!!! talk about a tone killer!! you are talking a MINIMUM of 3db loss probably more out of each end of the splitter.

you run out of your guitar and into a di box, my fav is the radial j48 you posted. sometimes i might run into my wah pedal or something vital fx wise then to the di.

the j48 has 2 outputs, xlr and 1/4" the di has a transformer to split the input of the guitar and retain its integrity and tone. passive di boxes tend to alter the signal a bit.

output 1 (xlr) goes to your audio interface. typically want it to be the cleanest pre you have, preferably using no gain on the pre or a line input. tube pre's are typically colored. trying to retain all your gtr tone at this point.

output 2 (1/4") goes to your guitar amp or pedals. to record
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then after you have edited or or got your raw gtr track ready to go then you gotta get out to the amp/pedal

the radial x-amp http://www.radialeng.com/di-xamp.htm or the "real" reamp box originally designed by john cuniberti for some satch stuff http://www.johncuniberti.com/reamp/ are the prefered units.
so you route your gtr track out of your audio interface into to the reamp box via xlr. from here you can drive the input of the amp with your output fader in your software.
mic it up and GO

one thing you have to watch is phase issues between reamped tracks and the original tracks that was recorded. most of the time these tracks will not be able to be used together from phase incoherencies unless your good and manipulating the tracks.
typically if i am gonna reamp, i just dump the original tracks if i need to be layering them.

My only concern about reamping is that you will lose that interaction that comes from playing an amp in the moment and hearing how it reacts and feels to your playing while playing. Reamping probably works great for thickening up tracks, but I don't think I would like to use it as a primary center of a track for lack of intended feel. Maybe I am missing the point though!

It depends, i like that interaction you mention, but with todays music be very "produced" and loud / huge guitar, dynamics doesnt seem to play as much as a part. I can't think of many bands now that really use amp dynamics.. .just a clean, not so clean, heavy sound; which are all created from different channels or amps and stuff...

reamping makes very nice polished guitar sounds.

I would say the thickening is the best feature of it. but at least one track of "live" guitar should be played along with it too.

MusicManJP6 said:

My only concern about reamping is that you will lose that interaction that comes from playing an amp in the moment and hearing how it reacts and feels to your playing while playing. Reamping probably works great for thickening up tracks, but I don't think I would like to use it as a primary center of a track for lack of intended feel. Maybe I am missing the point though!

Click to expand...

TYPICALLY (not always) you are running through an amp doing your thing playing when the "dry" track is recorded. feedback, finger noise, crappy vibrato, guitars dynamics, all the good stuff is there on your "dry" track. so a lot of times i am recording with the same amp that it will be reamped with but i dont feel like taking a couple hours setting up mics, checking phase, eq'ing, that kind of thing. just want to play!! so get your stuff setup and go for it! run back to the amps when i feel like it and go through all the nuances that need to be done.

most of the time when even reamping to a different amp than what is was originally recorded with, everything is fine, nothing is lost.

a lot of the time if i am recording a full project i will record all the guitars this way so week after week for months the tones from the amps, my eqing mood and such will vary so when tracking is done, take a few days and setup the amps and cabs and get mic placement down, phase issues taken care of, equing done and can ramrod through quite a few songs fast. typically do passes of "gtr 1" on all the songs, do my tone tweaks or amp changes and then do the passes of the next guitar and so on. the guitarist can have the pleasure of being in the room w his amp and all that good stuff when tracking. nothing is lost.