Been out of pocket the past few days and wanted to get caught up on what’s up with recording, 40th birthday for a friend and…uh…that’s it.
So, I’ve been out, but busy. This past Wednesday, I went in and cut all the bass tracks for Peter’s CD. Chris and I got some great sounds for it and everything seems to be coming together.
I used my two Warwick Corvette Standards for the tracks – basically, one fretted and one fretless. We split the signal with one direct track running through Chris’ Focusrite preamp/compressor and the other going through my Behringer 3000BX head into my SWR 2×10″ cabinet.
We mic’ed the cabinet with an EV857 on the speaker and my Rode NT2 about 2 feet out pointing towards the tweeter. The cabinet was up on an angled amp stand.
The direct signal probably will be the hottest of the three when we mix. It sounded really nice and has a lot of punch and presence. Of the two mics, the 857 provides nice, warm, round low end while the NT2 sounds big and fat. All three together gives real clarity but, at the same time, a ton of warmth that just fills up the low end.
We’ll go in and do acoustic guitars on Sunday and I’ll finish up my bass tracks for orange is in.
—
Also, it was George’s 40th birthday yesterday (June 3). George is my songwriting partner and the singer in orange is in. His wife and I conspired to get him a new acoustic guitar. His old Celebrity was really not working for him. It didn’t sound great and it played horribly. Now that he is doing more acoustic stuff with the band, he needed something better.
Originally, I kinda thought we’d go with one of the Martin X-series acoustics. They are much less expensive than the handmade Martins but they are still Martins and that counts for a lot. I played one at Guitar Center a couple months back and it was very nice.
But, all the one’s I looked at were acoustic only. I just figured I’d buy him a pickup and his wife could get the guitar. Well, we managed to find an acoustic with a pickup in the right price range. The pickup system is a Fishman that normally runs $350 by itself and, DAMN, does it sound good.
When Chris and I were tracking basic tracks for Peter, he plugged his $3000 Taylor direct into the board and we got a miraculous acoustic sound. I mean, I’d never heard a good acoustic pickup (at least for recording) and this sounded like a freakin’ microphone. What George has in his Martin is very similar to Peter’s pickup system and sounds just as good.
So, I’m a little jealous even though I still love my Yari.