Unsane vocal sound - Attn: Joel Hamilton

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Unsane vocal sound - Attn: Joel Hamilton

Post by permanent hearing damage » Wed Aug 13, 2014 1:13 pm

i totally understand if this is not something Joel would want to share, but i am curious what was being utilized for the dirted up vocals on Blood Run. reamping? some obscure hardware? i've tried overloading tube and non tube mic pres, using tube mics with no headroom, and a variety of distortion plugins with no luck. closest i think i have ever come was putting two EH12AY7 pres in series.

it sounds a bit too harsh to be reamped - guitar cabs always seem to smooth out the top end.

anyone with insight is welcome to chime in.

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Post by Recycled_Brains » Thu Aug 21, 2014 7:02 am

I'm interested in this too. Unsane is so crushing. The opening riff to this record... fuck.

Sounds like it could be an amp blended in, but I've gotten similar sounds reamping through a Rat or OD-1 pedal, or pushing my Daking pre really hard. I'd wager on the former though, judging by how the midrange sounds.
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Post by frans_13 » Wed Aug 27, 2014 5:35 am

I wouldn't mind hearing more about that record, not just about the vocals. :-)

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Post by joel hamilton » Thu Aug 28, 2014 11:00 am

Hey guys.
Glad you are digging that record.
For chris I used a hand held sm57 into some mic pre just getting blasted. Chris eats the mic and screams into it. He also cups it and basically mishandles the thing really well. :)
For dave I used a groove tubes MD1a original into a VTL era Manley tube mono reference pre.... Also getting blown out like crazy.
I wish I could remember what pre I used for chris.
Essentially... I didn't want it to sound like ministry or any other "deliberate" drive applied to the voices. I wanted it to sound like something was being hit harder than it wanted to be hit and that it was giving up in an ugly way.
Not a silky smooth overdrive... Not a "decapitator" type situation. Not a eat pedal on an aux... A mic pre being melted. Just committing to it being destroyed rather than being reasonable on the way in at all.
Hope that helps.

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Post by Recycled_Brains » Fri Aug 29, 2014 8:17 am

joel hamilton wrote:Hey guys.
Glad you are digging that record.
For chris I used a hand held sm57 into some mic pre just getting blasted. Chris eats the mic and screams into it. He also cups it and basically mishandles the thing really well. :)
For dave I used a groove tubes MD1a original into a VTL era Manley tube mono reference pre.... Also getting blown out like crazy.
I wish I could remember what pre I used for chris.
Essentially... I didn't want it to sound like ministry or any other "deliberate" drive applied to the voices. I wanted it to sound like something was being hit harder than it wanted to be hit and that it was giving up in an ugly way.
Not a silky smooth overdrive... Not a "decapitator" type situation. Not a eat pedal on an aux... A mic pre being melted. Just committing to it being destroyed rather than being reasonable on the way in at all.
Hope that helps.
Did a search for "unsane" and found this...

"The vocals needed to be driven, so for Chris's vocal I let a sytek (burr brown) get KILLED by an SM57 and also kill the NY2A on ELOP to keep the Ess's and overall "buzz" in check. For Dave's vocal, I used a GT1a through a manley tube reference pre, through a 33609 limiter. "
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Post by Injured Ear » Sat Aug 30, 2014 10:51 am

Here's to committing on the record side of things!

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Post by vvv » Sun Aug 31, 2014 9:08 am

"kill the NY2A on ELOP"

What's that mean?

Edit: aiight, I googled, never mind.
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Post by permanent hearing damage » Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:41 pm

cool! thanks for sharing

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Post by eh91311 » Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:31 pm

I found that Unsane album posted on youtube and even with the bad things that youtube does to audio, I can hear the lead vocal sounding distorted, effected but limited within a certain range of space. It definitely does not sound like someone added distortion or whatever after being tracked. Sometimes it's better to commit to a sound while recording it, rather than mangling it after the fact.

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