Oldschool steel recording

[Guido Hausmann]

i would like to know how the pros recorded steels in the 60's, 70's and maybe the 80's?
for example how did you prevent the noise from the pedals coming on the track?
today no issue with digital direct recording processors! but i tried to mike my amp and at home volume levels i got too much noise from the pedals / mechanics...

[Bryan Daste]

I would suggest simply moving the amp/mic farther away from the steel, or put something like a pillow in between the steel and the amp.

[Tony Prior]

Probably the same as today. The amp may be either in a smaller room located close by or maybe in the studio further away from the Pedal Steel so that the pedal noise is not noticed or heard.

Several months back I was fortunate to work a small session where I setup in the control room with the two producers and we put the amp in a very small room off of the control room. I didn't even wear phones, I listened back thru the studio monitors.

this was a children's learning production. Professor Pockets Hula Adventure.

www.professorpocket.com

I guess at the end of the day steel guitars ain't dead!

[John Gould]

We would track all together in the same room except for the vocalist would be in a isolation booth. They had gobo walls between everyone's amps to get isolation and gobo walls around the drums to isolate them as well. This was a great way to get feel onto the tracks. Having eye contact with the other players and the producer was a big help. Sometimes there would be parts that needed fixing with overdubs or if the producer heard something that he wanted to expand on.

[Dick Wood]

The few times I've worked in a studio they put the amp in a different room and one time they put it in the restroom.

[Cliff Kane]

As has been suggested, the "pro" thing to do is to isolate the amp. If you're at home and have limited space and are having problems with the mic picking up ambiant noise (like your pedals) try differnt micing techniques. How are you micing the amp now? Try close-micing the speaker with a dynamic mic, maybe you need to turn up the volume of the amp. Try what Herb suggested. Throw some blakets over the amp; get a big box and line it with foam or blankets (or not) and put it over the amp as an isolation box.

[Guido Hausmann]

cliff, till now, i was using a condenser mic! and the dynamic mics seem to be the much better solution!

[Cliff Kane]

Yea, the condensers have a higher output and sensitivity than the dynamics. Condensers are great for micing guitars, especially for a room sound, but if you're picking up unwanted ambient noise go with a dynamic close to the speaker. The Shure SM57 dynamic mic is the most common mic for close-micing a guitar amp.

[Rick Hedges]

If you don't have the option of placing the amp being in a separate room, you can always reamp the signal to avoid recording mechanical noise. Here's the basic technique, assuming you have a passive DI:

1. Run the cable from your guitar into the passive DI. Run the parallel 1/4" jack out of the DI (often labeled "thru") to your amp. Run the mic-level output into a mic preamp (this output should have an XLR connector instead of a 1/4" TS). Run that mic preamp into your audio recorder. Although you'll hear your amp as you normally do, you won't be recording the amp (yet). Instead, you're just recording the direct sound, before it ever reaches the amp.

2. Play back the recorded track, running that signal back into the DI box. Connect the instrument input from the DI back to your amp. When you play back the track, the audio will go through the DI and to your amp, which will basically sound just like it did when you originally played it, sans mechanical noise. This might seem a bit odd, since you're basically plugging the DI in "backwards", but since audio signals are AC, this works fine.

You can buy a dedicated reamp box, like the Reamp or the Little Labs Red Eye, but you can also use a passive(NOT active) DI to achieve the same goal.

Rick

[Guido Hausmann]

rick, i think even nowadays with digital software "reamping", this sounds like a real nice way to record with natural tube amps without any noise!
thanks! i will try that, too!