Thanks everyone for the feedback on this.

The feedback thing with the iPhone is simply Ampkit as it doesnt do it at all on garageband but thats another topic. Ill take my guitar into music connection and test it out and see what I can do. I like the sound of it a lot, can do with a mod here and there but Ill also look into getting a solid body

Thanks for the comments, I understand what you mean by the hollow body sound, its the reason I pick the guitar and then it was going for a crazy price. Im not too worried about the live side of things for now. Im busy looking at PRS SE guitars and wondering if that might be a good idea over my current guitar or maybe you right and I should change out the pickups.

RE the Amp, Im getting a real amp soon but i cant use it at home at all, so Ill still need to use the iPhone setup. Im getting a Palmer DREI ? and custom Eminence cabinet ? . I must say that the Garageband amps are a lot better than the Ampkit ones, ampkit just feeds for nothing the whole time.

Hey guys,

Im trying really hard to get back into guitar again as its been a good 5 years since Ive played live or with anyone. My current setup is a Ibanez Hollow body but not the classic looking ones, more like a PRS styled one. Then for amping I have a ampkit (iPod amp link thing) with either Ampkit or Garageband on my iPhone.

Something is up, I can play country and riffy stuff on the guitar but no rock or anything close to it. When Im playing the notes arent defined enough for me and it bugs me so much I give up, however with jazzy. blues stuff its fine. This leads me to think its the distortion side of things but more the fact I only get bugged when I use more heavy distortion or something. Im curious now, is it the guitar cause its a hollow body or is it the Ampkit setup and the fact I need a real amp? I used to have a Ibanez RTG42BP and a Laney stack with pedals and it worked fine for me.

Any thoughts?

Interesting, thought they were here already. Who was handling it before?

I checked out their line, a lot of guitars equals big capital lay out and another question is why did the last distributor drop it in the end or if they havent, what they doing wrong? Problem with taking on brands from another distributor is that you need a big layout cause they normally change cause the last one didnt buy enough.

Ok, thanks for the input.

So in short would be awesome if we had it here ? I liked the sounds I heard from the cabs. Emienece isnt a very big brand here it seems cause I cant really find it anywhere

Hey guys,

Just a question here. Do we get this in SA at all? Guys making custom guitar cabinets and fitting the speakers to your sound? Is it even something that would work here? You walk into a Shop, try out the speakers and then decide that you want xyz speakers cause it sound good with the amp and you guitar etc.

Here is a place that does it in Germany: http://www.palmer-germany.com/181-1-4x12-cabinet.html

Hey bud ?

nice one, on figuring out its, me. You right about the people coming to someone who is good, gear plays a small part cause the guy actually needs to know the gear while to make the most of it, comes down to experience and as they said get your skill and own it. In terms of pricing and rates, fair its true that we dont need too but we are then talking about guys like the studios Im at or people who always produce number ones, its worth it.

With up and coming its good that there is smaller studios, loads of them actually. All bands should be signed or doing really well both they invest in a serious recording, I would never expect a indy band to spend so much at a studio cause the end of the day they'll sell x copies and the rest will be copied. Guys who spend that much sell 400 000 copies and get national air play.

Anyway, nice thing about creative industry is that its not dependant on location, the skill is in the person. Only thing Ill say is Cape Town has Cape Audio College so they general student is a lot better at music production than the Jozi and PTA guys.

Sent from my IDEOS S7 Slim using Tapatalk

Hi Alan,

Yip, Grace is nice and great river also! I actually know someone selling some great rivers off, think he still has them. There is a none tube version of the 610 also, think its 110 or something.

Another pre to look at is the Slate Pro Audio Dragon, gives you a lot for the price. Convertors.... Don't get me started! ? Prism Sound! Studio gas is bad!!!

Hello there,

1. I wouldnt go for the boss if I was you, its a lot of money for something you not really going to use and its going to make everything really hard when tracking, rather get Amplitube or GuitarRig so you can edit in the box. Rather get a guitar that will work for you first and one of the plug ins I mentioned, they sound good and if you learn them you'll be able to get some good sounds out of them.

2. Does THX certified mean anything at all when it comes to mics??? Thats the best marketing pitch Ive ever heard. THX is like dolby, its for surround sound stuff etc, not microphones. Anyway, there is a number of microphones you can look at, try get something with multiple patterns cause it allows you to do a lot with a microphone if you know how to use them. Look at Rode, sE, AKG and others.

3. You can buy a bass for cheapish and look at getting something like Amplitube SVX for the amp side (Its another plug in), drums, as he said, get the plug in/program stuff, also check out Steven Slate Drums.

4. Your set up is fairly good so far, you'll probably find you'll be looking at studio monitors at some point but microphones are important, then as he said mic pre amps are also something to look at but I can tell you the cheap stuff wont make a huge difference, its best to save up for something that will. Try get a UA Solo 610 ? awesome DI and pre amp

And here is the answer to what you been asking ?

When you record again and if you cant seperate the recordings and you need to do it all at once, use mic stands with blankets on them to try block off some of the sounds from the other instruments. Then use the microphone patterns to your advantage by placing them away from the other instruments. You'll find that the low end will always come through but the highs will be reduced and you may be able to do more with the tracks if you do it this way. Its not the best way but its how it used to be done in the day

Hey,

There isnt much you can do than just get a sound card that is built for recording, sound blasters are slightly better than the normal PC sound cards but honestly you going to need to spend some cash on this. Other option is to use audio cleaning tools to try clean it up but its going to mess with your sound of your guitar. Bite the bullet and buy a M-Audio starter kit for a R1000 or so which comes with a very basic pro tools software and a sound card that will work.

I also started on Audacity and had a sound blaster, I know where you coming from... just dont buy the stupid Behringer desk like I did.. waste of money!

Hey,

Monitor wise: KRK isnt in the level of EMES or the others so I wouldnt even look at KRK if I was you if you looking in that direction. Ive heard good things about EMES from the importer and Marshall Music Cape Town so could be good, looks good. Other options are ADAM, Focal and EMES, there is others but these are the best in their class really, especially price wise cause the distributors sell them at the US price locally.

Hey bud (can say that cause you actually know me),

Some will say Cape Town doesn't have as big market as JHB and others will say its better. The case isn't either cause there is a difference and unless you have seen both sides it won't seem like it.

Let's brake your question up: Is there any good studios in either: Yes, there is and a lot of them do well in some way but they have become realistic about how they make money.

Do they charge fair rates? What is fair is the question here, bands complain studios are too expensive etc but in the same space, it should be said that you get what you pay for however! I do agree some guys are milking it with rip off rates for a place that isn't good or has a good engineer. This is where musos kill sound engineers that are good: The good guys do cost a lot but they have experience and what takes them an hour to do would take a normal sound guy a week to do. However its not the muso fault always, in the end its the venues and others whom rip them off equally.

Are there too many studios in either city: Yes, there is way too many bedroom guys doing the jobs for a friction of the price cause they have cracked software and they don't care, R400 a song is a joke honestly. I mean, if you workout how many hours it takes to record that song it goes below min wage that the sound guy is getting.

So how do you get into the industry: You'll need to decide how serious you want to take it, if you serious you can't run it from a bedroom setup unless you have a real name in the industry. I know some guys do but if you look at the difference, they bedroom guys deal with R2000 - R5000 album budgets while the real studio guys deal with R50 000 - R250 000 budgets. Another example is my one friend produces and records, he gets R10 000 per song.

Cape vs Johannesburg: Well there is more kids in JHB with bedroom studios here but in the same space, most of the music industry is here cause the main radio and TV stations are here, plus in JHB we have Tuks which helps bands a lot!

Cheers!

Yip ? I saw the love people have here for them already. Well lets see how I get taken on but looking forward to helping some guys out where I can. Must add, I also am not a major fan of sound engineers... wonder why I ended up being one :? must be my fear of microphones.

Swing the Pro Toolsquestion whenever you want. Been training it for some time now so got my head around answering questions.

RE: AKG, they worth looking at, the distributor in SA made them a good price so they actually not too pricy

Good advice from your friend, if you just want to capture stuff quickly then get a USB mic from Samson, they super cheap, easy setup and simple... dont sound great but you'll get what you wanted on record and then one day you can capture it for real.

Hey Karoo,

Depending on how serious you go but considering this is a budget setup Ill go with the affordable option. Normally Ill out right recommend a iMac but they pricy.

Back to point, if you not doing anything to crazy recording mixing and large track recording, you can get away with a pretty simple setup. I used to track 8 channels (Record) and mix 16 channels session or more on my latop, a simple dual core intel with 2GB RAM.

So basic PC setup would be:
- Windows 7! (Pro Tools went to the bank to make sure it worked really well on Windows 7, almost as much as they do to work on Mac)
- 2x HDD if possible, reason is that your main drive will be running windows and pro tools, to make it stable its recommend that you record to a second drive and not the system drive. Along with this try get a 7200RPM drive for the recording drive.
- 2 to 4GB RAM, remembering that if you not running 64bit you can only see 3.3GB (Its something like that) of RAM. The RAM is important for instrument plug ins with loads of samples, so if you going to run heavy samples like drum kits then its best to have a good amount of RAM, more than 2GB is normally good enough.
- CPU: Single core 2.8GHz is good, Dual Core 2.4GHz is good enough, Quad, 2.4GHz. The more cores the better, Pro Tools splits its usage between the cores so one core will handle the system, the other the recording engine and then the others will handle samples and plug ins. In short 3 cores covers it easily. Dual core is good enough in general. If you can get a CPU without the FSB (Front Side Bus) anymore it would be best.
- Graphics: Doesnt matter really, dual screen is nice but once you know your Pro Tools shortcuts its easy.

So what kind of computer is this? Its your common computer now a days but I can say HP is a good option and if you know how to build your own its a good idea. However! Cheapy PCs like the ones that come from funny places have cheap Motherboards... if anything try get a intel board or nice gaming board.

Hope this helps, I may have gone into too much detail but I can make it more simple and just post a link to machine that will work. I will also add, its nicer to have a laptop cause then you can record anywhere, Laptops now a days are seriously powerful and can easily handle Pro Tools, just make sure you set the power scheme to high preformance, its on the battery icon at the clock section.

When it comes to headphones... there is only one! Audio Technica ATH-M50! Just trust me, Ive had R6k AKG and these blow them out the water and they around R2k

They pretty nice monitors, nice and sold is one thing they are. Also check the ADAMs out, the A7X (The big boys are R12k, then the smaller A5X are R7k.

Steven Slate Drums, enough said ? www.stevenslatedrums.com