chris77
I need some help please. I want to enter the July Challenge with a piece I figured out on acoustic. (Tried playing and recording it with an electric, but it just doesn't sound the same.) The problem is I don't have any mics or interfaces for recording an acoustic, just my Fender G-Dec3 - which is a modelling amp for electrics. Now, I've recorded the acoustic through it in the past, but it didn't come out so great. It has a lot of great amp and effect models though, so I think that with the right combination I should at least be able to get something decent down.
The guitar is my Breedlove which is fitted an LR Baggs pre-amp which sounds good when played through a PA (although still nowhere nearly as good as unplugged), so the signal in is OK I think. The problem is, what then?
Let's take the modelling out of the equation and just think of it as recording with a clean solid state amp and some adding some effects. How can I get the tone to be more natural sounding? Which settings should the bass and trebble on the guitar and amp be? And what effects do I add then - if any. Some Reverb I would think, but what about delay? Or Chorus?
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated, thank you.
AlanRatcliffe
Well the first and most important thing is to take the modelling out of the equation - both amp and speaker modelling. Amps and speakers skew the EQ something fierce and have a narrow bandwidth (usually about 80Hz - 4KHz), so can't go anywhere near as high or low as an acoustic needs to sound remotely natural.
So disable any amp or speaker models if you can and you're most of the way there. If you can't disable the models, but your amp has an effects loop, try plugging into the return to bypass the modelling preamp altogether.
As far as effects are concerned, a little dab'll do ya. A touch of reverb (plate or room if you have them) is nice, but careful not to swamp the sound. Reverb times are all important: 800ms - 1.2s for a tighter sound good for rhythm; 1.5 - 2.5s to fill out sparse playing; or longer for huge ambient padlike effects. A little chorus and/or delay can work too, but simpler is usually better for most acoustic applications.
chris77
Cool, thanks Alan. Will try that!
