hi. i've recorded some guitar tracks in a professional studio for the first time last week. I did this for my second band, and we play punk rock (many here won't appreciate i think 
)... actually i play the bass in this band (that's the only reason i'm still playing with them, although they're good friends... playing bass is a sort of experimental thing for me). With my main band i play from folk-rock to metallica BTW...
Well, my bandmates (the punk rockers) wanted to record a cd but our guitarists aren't really skillful, so they asked me to record the guitar tracks. So i recorded some tracks plugging the guitar into a sort of line preamp (not really a preamp since it is supposed to record the pure sound coming out of the giutar, thus not pre-amplifying it): the producer told me to do this, and even if it seemed strange to me, i must say there's a really high end equipment in the studio, and the sound of the guitar seems to remain full and dinamic and not to loose frequencies. He suggested then to use those software like Guitar Rig or Amplitube (he hardly works with distorted guitars 8) ), but i rather prefer using a real amp and miking it (producer will send the line-recorded signal to the input of the amp as i was actually playing the guitar into it - that's the same i did recording bass).
And finally i come to the question: i've got a mesa studio preamp but no poweramp. In the recording studio there's instead a marshall jcm900 head and a marshall 4x12 cab, so i thought about using the pre into the return of the marshall's fx loop (studio recording outs lacks of attack and i won't use them). tried it, but the sound was too dirt (not in the sense of gainy) and absolutely was not smooth like i wanted. I will surely adjust preamp's controls, but i wondered if anyone could help me with mic placement (or suggesting other tricks) to achieve a smooth and fluid overdriven tone. many thanks.
franz
)... actually i play the bass in this band (that's the only reason i'm still playing with them, although they're good friends... playing bass is a sort of experimental thing for me). With my main band i play from folk-rock to metallica BTW...Well, my bandmates (the punk rockers) wanted to record a cd but our guitarists aren't really skillful, so they asked me to record the guitar tracks. So i recorded some tracks plugging the guitar into a sort of line preamp (not really a preamp since it is supposed to record the pure sound coming out of the giutar, thus not pre-amplifying it): the producer told me to do this, and even if it seemed strange to me, i must say there's a really high end equipment in the studio, and the sound of the guitar seems to remain full and dinamic and not to loose frequencies. He suggested then to use those software like Guitar Rig or Amplitube (he hardly works with distorted guitars 8) ), but i rather prefer using a real amp and miking it (producer will send the line-recorded signal to the input of the amp as i was actually playing the guitar into it - that's the same i did recording bass).
And finally i come to the question: i've got a mesa studio preamp but no poweramp. In the recording studio there's instead a marshall jcm900 head and a marshall 4x12 cab, so i thought about using the pre into the return of the marshall's fx loop (studio recording outs lacks of attack and i won't use them). tried it, but the sound was too dirt (not in the sense of gainy) and absolutely was not smooth like i wanted. I will surely adjust preamp's controls, but i wondered if anyone could help me with mic placement (or suggesting other tricks) to achieve a smooth and fluid overdriven tone. many thanks.
franz
