Mixing with guitar pedals

[nortstudio]

I often use pedals while mixing - or reamp certain tracks through amps in the live room. A trick I was taught a long time ago, when i assisted, was to run your board signal (or soundcard signal, back then it as tape) out to a DI in reverse. This came from the days before REAMP made their products.

For example, I assign the channel to a buss (so that I can trim it to taste) and patch it into the mic box in the live room (or producer's desk in control room for pedals) . Then XLR from mic box to DI, and 1/4" from DI to pedal/amp. Then I mic the amp (or have the pedal come back into the board) and use another channel on the console to amplify the signal.

It has always provided a stepped down signal - so that the amp is not getting hit beyond belief, which doesn't allow you to utilize the gain on the amp, for the sound you are looking for.

In fact, the cheap ART DI boxes have a pad that works in reverse, giving you even more control over the hot signal hitting the pedal/amp you are using.

[ec]

My (old...) Pod is pretty awesome for this. The reverbs are pretty cool, and it has some other decent effects on it. (Good recipe for warming up crappy drum machine sounds: run them through the Pod on the "tube preamp" simulator and give it a little reverb. As "tube preamps" typically don't have reverb, the reverb in that simulation is a fairly nice room sound.)

[jgimbel]

nortstudio, do you then just record the signal to another track? I've been wanting use pedals this way, and actually using any outboard gear other than preamps (compressors for example) but I don't know another way to do it than just to record the signal back in. I'm running Cubase LE4, and it doesn't seem to have a good way to use external processing unless you're just running out an output to your external gear, the back in and recording to a second track. Is this what you're doing, or is this version of Cubase just very limiting in this sense? I've loved using the program and there haven't been many limits I've reached with the kind of stuff I'm doing, but I've often wondered if I'd be able to do things like this in a way that didn't involve just recording the signal to another track.

[nortstudio]

Sometimes, I am recording to another track - mainly because I want the clean track to remain 'as is.' if it's a flaky effect (space echo), it's good to have the sound solidly in your system - without worrying about it changing as the mix goes on.

Also, I am often just bringing it up on the console while mixing, so i'm not worried about getting it into the DAW at all.

If you are talking about using Cubase with outboard as inserts, that's another story. There are hardware ways to use your interface as an insert (in Pro Tools HD at least), utilizing your I/O and setting up buss, etc. It requires delay compensation etc.

Ultimately, the hassle involved with sending it out to effects or outboard is usually far outweighed by the quality of sound that you will end up with.