Recording breakthru !!

[Bud Angelotti]

I'm the kind of guy who really does not like loud sound & music - unless I'm the one making the noise. I've been told I can hear like a bat, and smell like a dog.
So, I recently re-set up my little home studio in a room that got cleaned out due to life changes. Just a little man-cave area. Now, this is something I've wanted to do for a long..long..time. What we did, in a nutshell, was put the guitar/steel speaker cabinet out in the shed with the lawnmower. No, the lawnmower was not running. Drilled a hole thru a spot in an old window frame to run cables. I can patch it up later and the hole will disappear. Ran a good ol' sm57 to "hear" the speaker. The amp controls are separate from the speaker so they are at my fingertips,in the man-cave.
For the first time-ever, I can now hear the steel and anything else that gets pumped thru that speaker, thru my monitors and NOT thru the amp speakers, directly into my ears. I am not using the guitar speaker as a monitor, but rather, the MONITOR as a monitor.
The guitar speaker is in a cinderblock area, attached to the house. I can turn that puppy up, get it really pumping without bothering anybody, especially my own ears.

We have been monkeying around with creating "organic reverb" as well, in the shed. Hanging a second mic in a big metal crab bucket, hanging springs from the pot, a slinky, stuff like that. Not trying to reinvent the wheel, just trying out things that might make it sound interesting, unique, and pleasing to the ear. Not setting the world on fire, but good Mid-winter fun!
If this opportunity presents itself to any of you other home recording enthusiasts, I totally recommend the time and effort. Put the guitar speaker somewhere else, in a closet, in another room, in the garage, anywhere out of direct ear range, and monitor IT.
I think this is called a "sound chamber".
Cheers All!

[David Mitchell]

Yep! That's why they build recording studios so the engineers and producers can hear exactly what's being recorded without any surprises. Never thought of a tool shed but I guess it would work fine. Anything to separate the original source from the monitors.

[Bill Hatcher]

i made my living in recording studios for decades and have the musicians union pension to prove it! lol

all i took in amp wise was a brown princeton amp. i had removed the head and mounted it into an old gibson amp carcass and attached a 20 ft long speaker cable to the 10" speaker in the original princeton box. i would put the speaker in whatever closet was close by. engineers loved it, because it got rid of one more sound in the main recording room.

what you are doing is basically using the shed for an isolation booth. every good studio has those for guitar speaker cabinets to play as loud as needed and still be able to control them when the main room is being used by other players during a session.

your idea for ambient sounds from a bucket....see joe meek. they make boxes with great reverbs in them...you might consider that route...