2.4. Tone Setting
-Set the distortion level less than gig level. Too much distortion in recording will make your track lack of definition and create muddiness to your tone. Instead, double (overdub-play the exactly same riff again and record it to different track) the track with slightly different tone control setup to create bold, live, thick and heavy yet defined distortion rhythm. Remember also to TRIM your input prior to proceed to multi-track recorder to get maximum allowable headroom as outlined above. Key: Optimum Level + Less Distortion = Larger-than-life Sound
-When tracking, if your songs require effect like delay, reverb, phaser, tremolo, wah, chorus, any other fancy mega-mondo stuff, ask your studio engineer to route the wet signal (signal with effect) to your monitor only (it can be studio speaker monitor or real guitar amp) to help you're feeling right and have the dry signal only printed to multi-tracks. Effects can be done later in the mixing stages. When you print wet track during tracking, you can't undo it later, you know that don't you.
-Do not EQ (in console) after recording too much, it will make your sound less breathes (or lost the soul, less lifeless, whatever). Avoid dial EQ over 3 dB. If you need to shape your tone, do that in your amp, stomp-boxes, etc just before going to record. Other words, prepare for your best tone first, then do the tracking. That will make better result than repair the bad tone after the track has been recorded.
-If you use a gate to reduce noise or interference, put the gate after distortion stage, but before compression. This is so the gate won't cut off your reverb or delay decays. Adjust the decay time so as not to cut off notes prematurely and set the threshold as low as you can without allowing noise to break through. Either an expander or a dynamic noise filter will do the same job, often with less noticeable side effects than a basic gate.
-One more thing about effects, use decent outboard multi-effects rack with 24-bit engine. Most of professional studios should have it.
2.5. Attenuator
Those of you who have tube amp, you already know that you need to crank it up to get the distorted sound you want. If you're living in Middle Earth, that's no problem. But if you live in rural neighborhood or record in poorly-soundproofed studio where everybody could hear the sound leakage, chances are you seduce people to kill you or waking up the dead in the near cemetery. If that's not the effect you want, invest an amp attenuator.
The other reason is that when you run a loud signal into a speaker, the speaker distorts. Some speaker distortion sounds good, some doesn't. The speaker distortion that sounds good is when the speaker gets a good clipped wave form and has to try to move in a manner it wasn't really designed to move.
The speaker distortion that sounds like crap is when you're driving the poor things so hard that the paper on the cone loses its shape, and the surround that connects the speaker to the basket gets all crinkled and not round. This kind of speaker distortion severely screws with the tone, and worse, your speakers "go soft" faster so you won't be able to get the tone you once got when the speakers were new.
With the attenuator you can turn your amp up as loud as you like, then using the attenuation capabilities you can bring down the volume to where A) the amp sounds the balls; B) you're doing less damage to your speakers and C) your band-mates (or the audience where you're playing, or your neighbors, etc.) won't want to kill you for being too fucking loud. The bottom line is that you'll get all the tone you were trying to get, for a longer period of time and you'll have an overall more useable setup.
There's a good attenuator out there. Marshall made a good attenuating box but the price is similar with new solid state 2x12" amp. Here's the alternative: THD Hot Plate Attenuator costs much less than Marshall.
Recording Tips 
Sunday, 18 May 2008
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