I need to vent (maybe you do to?)

[GoatKnuckles]

So I started working on this 70's type rock project with some friends, we wrote three songs so i figured I'd throw up some mics and lay down the scratch tracks. I had a really awesome guitar tone going on, Les Paul into a Fender Deluxe with the EHX Germanium OD with voltage around 7 o clock, had a cool hendrix esque fuzz type tone that seemed to respond equally well to single notes as well as chords. I played back the roughs and everything sounded great. I set up today to start doing the guitar overdubs and for the life of me I can't get the sound again, it was a single mic setup Cascade Fathead II. I tried various positions similar to what I had and I can't get anything to match up to close to the tone I had. I decided to stop before I threw something out the window and go hang out with my puppy. I'm sure we all deal with things like this, post your story if you have one.

[cgarges]

When "Money For Nothing" was recorded, everyone was so jazzed about the sound they stumbled onto that they measured (in great detail) all the distances between mics and speakers and angles and whatnot, carefully documented each piece of equipment's settings, and then were never able to get that exact sound again.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[CurtZHP]

How long was gear on before you started tracking the first time around?

How good was the battery in the fuzz box?

[chris harris]

yeah... my guess is that it's got something to do with how long the tubes in that amp had to warm up. i try to get punches out of the way pretty quickly with tube amps. you never know how that amp is gonna sound an hour later.

[premiumdan]

My "favorite" is back from the Tascam Portastudio days...

Imagine the most rediculous idea ever played.
Imagine the most stellar tone possible.
Imagine getting handcramps from playing it for 30 minutes.
Imagine leaving the recording-lever in "safe mode".

*grr*

-Dan

[sparky]

dude i have this problem all the time even without even considering the post-air-gap recording chain. Just the issue of guitar->pedals->amp. At least with tube amps and analog pedals. One day it sounds great, next day, turn on the same shit without touching anything, sounds completely different. I don't know what it is, battery in the pedals? power sag? operating temp? humidity? the expansion/contraction of the wood of the guitar changing the string tension? different oil on the player's hands?

I have this problem with electric guitars 10x more than anything else. I think once you get an electric guitar set up and overdriven through a tube amp to the point where you have nice crunch and feedback possibilities, you've basically created a chaotic system. So you basically have a 'butterfly in tokyo' situation with your electric guitar sound where super-small changes in the initial rocking conditions have huge effects on the final fury state.

Everthing sounds different in different weather, and i've used finicky bass amps, etc. , but nothing is as extreme as electric guitars through tube amps.

[mjau]

Yep, part of the mystery of it all.
I have one amp that sounds significantly different after it's been on about an hour - earlier, better-sounding break-up most noticably.

[Professor T]

I once had this awesome tele tone going. (Freeride) I did one pass, put the amp on standby, took a listen, then went back to fix 2 chords that I missed. The tone was gone.

Turned out later to be a bad guitar chord. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

[sparky]

i read some thing (maybe on TOMB?) about how some guys like SRV liked to use shitty guitar cords because they thought they got a better sound. Also that some dudes used to use shitty mains cords because their higher resistance starved the tube-based rectifiers and that made them sag giving power to the output tubes quicker.

[chris harris]

Turned out later to be a bad guitar chord. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

G minor?

[losthighway]

yeah... my guess is that it's got something to do with how long the tubes in that amp had to warm up. i try to get punches out of the way pretty quickly with tube amps. you never know how that amp is gonna sound an hour later.

The conventional wisdom (mythology(?)) that I always heard was that the tube amp will sound better after being warmed up.

One thing I do know is a lot of classic amps that have a master volume and a gain have dramatic tone changes at lower levels with just a tiny twist of the dial. For example my Traynor is an absurd 160 Watts. It breaks up really easy with humbuckers so I keep the gain low. When negotiating the volume to balance with my band I've discovered that the master volume knob going from 1.5 to 1.8 can be the difference that makes the thing blossom. Likewise the relationship between the gain setting and master volume as well as the general level of the master volume has huge effects on all of my boost and overdrive pedals, on levels that are so esoteric I can't necessarily predict. Sometimes with my typical tone setup I hit my overdrive and the guitar roars, other times it sounds gritty and drops in volume. This is with the output of the pedal always in the same place.

If you want the same guitar tone a day later I'm pretty sure you need to hold a seance. Otherwise I make people punch the entire section of the song. I have had better luck doing vocal punches a month later than setting up the guitar a day later. Other times it just works. Don't mean to be anti-intellectual but sometimes you can't account for every variable.

[johnny7]

Turned out later to be a bad guitar chord. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

G minor?

I was guessing Gmaj7...

[Professor T]

ha- you got me. guitar cord.

[Zygomorph]

I think that anybody who plays a wooden, acoustic instrument is well aware of the continuous battle with temperature, humidity and the alignment of the stars.

[GooberNumber9]

Just last night I had band practice in an unheated garage. Everyone agree that the room sounded much better at the end of practice when it was noticably warmer (tube amps plus five people jumping around). Despite all technical acoustics knowledge that says the sound should change with temperature, I was amazed at how obvious it was - even to our drummer! ;)