Recording Guitar... Questions About Preamps Etc... Options

[Righteous Bullet]

ok i know its a good idea to use a preamp for recording direct with guitar. this is a dumb question but im wondering if you should use it with a mic too. The reason i ask is because i am (for the time being) micing my amp sending that into my mixer and then mixer hooks to the pc, and im using free software just so i can record a little and get my ideas down since i dont have a good setup yet. Anyway when i record my amp with my guitar distorted it can often sound pretty crappy and im not sure why, and i think there are preamps in my mixer anyway... is this something i should fix with the sofware? like use a compressor or something? or what?

[Shredhed]

There's no real good vs. bad argument when it comes to preamp-to-board vs. real mic/cabinet.

The reason you'd want to use a preamp direct to the mixing board is to rid yourself of both the hassles and huge number of variables involved with close micing guitar cabinets (not to mention the sheer volume often required to get a decent tone).

Those hassles and variables, though, are often where "magic" happens. Close-back vs. open-back cabinet, 12" vs. 15" speaker, speaker manufacturer, mic type, mic manufacturer, mic position etc. All of these things can massively change your tone (good or bad) by just messing with them a tiny bit.

The more money you have, the easier it becomes to fake all those variables with something like (if you're independently wealthy) a real Soldano head and Palmer speaker emulator. Yet even rocket science boxes like the Roland VG-88 don't *quite* give you the same feeling of "reality" as a mic shoved in front of a speaker.

Personally, since I live in a townhome and have one of those "wife" things, I don't have luxury of cranking it, so I use a Rocktron VooDu Valve, which has a real tube pre section and a kick-ass but relatively simple-to-configure cabinet modeling feature. It eliminates all of the hassles and gives me 50% the flexibility of a real mic/cab setup. Not a bad tradeoff.

IMO the POD is a *killer* box for the price, but I personally find its tone a little too generic for my tastes. Pro: easy to get fantastic sound out of it, Con: not so easy to get a distinctive tone out of it. One thing the POD won't do (dten, StratMan, I may be wrong?) is good speaker emulation - at least the older POD I once used. The POD doesn't allow you to get that real KACHUNK sound that a real speaker cabinet makes when it's being severely punished by high volume. Makes a huge difference in a mix sometimes, really helps define the guitar if you're riffing about in the lower registers, regardless of if you're playing death metal or country.

If you've got the computing horsepower required, have a look at the Native Instruments "Guitar Rig", it looks f'ing awesome.

http://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.php?guitarrig_us

Oh, and regardless of which method you choose (hell, do both), cables can make a VAST difference in the quality of sound that gets recorded, so pay the extra for good quality patch cords...

Bla bla bla. Anyway, just my $0.02 - evaluate as many things as you can and rely on your own ears.