First recording with Hamptone (slow indie rock)

dynomike · Post by **dynomike** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 9:35 am

I used the hamptone on bass di, vocals, and guitar di which I then did a ghetto reamp (console line outs) to my musicman hd130.

I'm pretty happy with it. I'm gonna futz a bit more with the kick n bass, and the background vocals. Might add a high capo'd acoustic part in the second verse too. Check it out and let me know how it can improve.. not a final mix.

160kbps mp3 (~7 megs)

Mike

tateeskew · Post by **tateeskew** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 3:52 pm

i like this a lot, mike. i always like your stuff. i need to send you some cash for a copy of your ep.

you can nitpick all you want, but i wouldn't touch it. it's pretty tasty the way it is.

what mic was used on the vocals?

dynomike · Post by **dynomike** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:15 pm

Thanks d00d. Dingo pm'd me and asked for more details so here are some.

Preamps and converters - Ramsa DA7, except hamptone where mentioned above.

Mics

Apex 420 (pair) - overheads
Audiotechnica 4047 - snare, vocals
Tape-Op/PPA Ribbons - rack, floor, tamborine, back of gtr. amps, sometimes front of amp (like on the ambient guitar part at the end)
Beyer m88 - kick, gtr amp front
Shure sm91 - under snare (picks up mainly snare/kick)

I think that about covers it! I didn't use a lot of mics on this. The lead vocal has a gentle high pass @80 Hz or so, and a little bump (1 or 2 db) at 1.5kHz. I've been listening to it in the car a lot and I don't think I'll change much, just slightly automating the levels on the bgvs so they pop out more in the last chorus, and eq'ing the kick (or adding more of the sm91.. hmm).

Mike

gsa · Post by **gsa** » Wed Nov 16, 2005 4:33 pm

This is beautiful.

logey · Post by **logey** » Wed Nov 16, 2005 5:13 pm

I agree...beautiful. I've been toying with the idea of building a Hamptone JFET preamp, but I had never heard one...this track put any fears I might have had to rest. The vocal you recorded with it is very flattering and has a very nice musical quality to it...it doesn't hurt that you have a nice voice, either!
So the question is, which Hamptone is it? Did you build the Tube or the Jfet? Also, did you track the vocal with any compression?

Nice work and thanks for sharing.

dynomike · Post by **dynomike** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 10:42 am

What, you can't *tell* whether its tube or jfet? Lol, its the jfet. I figured I'd opt for the lower cost, less hazard of building, and wider tonal range (the jfet overdrives more than the tube version if you really dime it).

Vocals are compressed with waves rcl, in the box, pulling out maybe 6db on the loudest (and highest) notes... mostly no more than 1 or 2 db though in the verses.

Again, thanks for the comments guys. I was hoping it would sound beautiful, but its a fine line between too boring and too busy when beautiful and spacious is what you're aiming for.

Mike

logey · Post by **logey** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 10:55 am

Great! I was hoping it wasn't the tube...I like the idea of having more tonal diversity too. Not to highjack this thread away from your music, but what was your experience of building the preamp? Easy? Hard? Fun? How would you compare it to other preamps that you've used?
I gotta admit, I always like the feeling of recording something cool with a tool that I made myself...puts the satisfaction meter through the roof.
Thanks again.

dynomike · Post by **dynomike** » Thu Nov 17, 2005 3:17 pm

Speaking of satisfaction meter, it would be nice if the hamptone had some meters, but of course, that would put the cost of the kit up a lot. In general I found it REALLY easy to build the kit. Then I found out that I screwed it up and found it REALLY hard to troubleshoot. Scott was helpful and provided me with tests, which all tested ok - then I had an engineer friend look at it and I had misread some labelling on the pcbs. Grr. Anyway, all in all quite a simple and rewarding process. Didn't take that long either, just a couple nights after work actually, then a couple hours to do the tests with a variac to make sure the PSU was ok before hooking everything up.

I'm gonna be recording (over the next month or so) a new track (just started on drums yesterday) with the hamptone on vocals again, but with some of the preamp grit, so you'll get to hear what it can do in that respect pretty soon. I used it on kick n snare too and it fattened/flattened them up abit while still having good fast transients. Anyway back to this song I guess.. I don't mind derailing my own thread, of course.

Mike

greatmagnet · Post by **greatmagnet** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:31 am

I'll be checking this out eagerly when the boss leaves the room

Interesting that you used the 4047 on snare...what's your positioning on that? Very near or kinda far away? Diaphragm parallel with the snare or angled?

Did you use the backside of the TapeOp ribbons most of the time? You had mentioned to me before that you preferred that most of the time.

cominginsecond · Post by **cominginsecond** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 1:47 pm

Wow! This is an amazing song, both in terms of songwriting and in recording quality.

greatmagnet · Post by **greatmagnet** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 1:52 pm

Everybody should get a copy of Mike's EP and support the cause...it's really good stuff beginning to end.

cominginsecond · Post by **cominginsecond** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 1:58 pm

I'm pretty surprised that Mike's not signed to a big indie label.

greatmagnet · Post by **greatmagnet** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 2:05 pm

The industry still frowns on any musican with a conjoined twin hanging off his left earlobe, but that's likely to change soon I figure.

dynomike · Post by **dynomike** » Tue Nov 22, 2005 4:27 pm

Caldo71 wrote:The industry still frowns on any musican with a conjoined twin hanging off his left earlobe, but that's likely to change soon I figure.

That was our secret, you bastard! All that time wasted carefully editing photos for my website.. gaah.

Yeah, the 4047 on snare was positioned largely as you would a, say, sm57 - maybe 3" above the rim and angled towards the center of the snare. Pad on, and high pass on. And I do use the backside of the tapeop ribbons all the time - actually, I sometimes use the "front" side for really annoying percussion stuff to smooth it out, like (ahem) cowbell. You should def. take out the inner mesh from yours Adam. It takes forever and when your halfway through you think that you've permanently broken them and you never should have started but when its done it feels so good. Kind of like when you're trying to do a chinup?

Mike

dynomike · Post by **dynomike** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 1:20 pm

Updated the file on my website. Same link, but it now has the acoustic guitar and some tiny changes in background vocal levels.

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First recording with Hamptone (slow indie rock)

First recording with Hamptone (slow indie rock)

Tube or Jfet?

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