How to spend more money on guitars
Most musicians I know(including myself) have G.A.S(Gear Acquisition Syndrome). I think that acronym is funnier in the states. It’s the life long quest that if you only had that one magical piece of expensive equipment, then you would reach an enlightened pinnacle of your creative expertise. It’s the one missing piece of the jigsaw. After you have it, it will all be profit from there on. Once you buy that piece of equipment, it’s replaced by another and another; each time convinced that the next link in the chain will be the one.
Guitarists are by far the worst sufferers of this syndrome. Drummers are too busy fixing what they have. Guitarists buy endless effects pedals, endless amps, multiple guitars - an infinite number of reasons not to practice that hard lick, or write that elusive hit. We’ve all been there. Effect pedals are the perfect size and price for a wee gift to yourself when you are needing a boost(treble or otherwise).
What confuses me is that I’ve seen guitarists spend 1000’s on guitar pedals. 8 different reverb pedals. 4 overdrives. 8 distortions. A flanger - just in case. Then they either take no interest in home recording, or they fire it through a virtual amp to make it all easier.
So here…. A secret to all guitarists… there’s a magical place to spend more money… and it might actually make the difference that your 14th Stratocaster just can’t.
A Guitar Recording Channel
No mailing list sign up…. No adverts….. The ultimate guitar recording channel.
So you have a guitar, and an amp. You put a microphone in front of it and then you record it into your favourite DAW(Logic, Pro tools, Ableton).
That’s it. Done. But at each stage you can make wee improvements, and your favourite band’s recording techniques aren’t really that far off(For people with disposable income to spend on a their 4th tremolo pedal).
I’m going to leave the guitar and amp choice to you. All I will say is. Valves are lovely in the amps. 5W can sound better than 200W and a professional setup on a beloved £200 guitar might be worth more than a badly tuned £3000 guitar that you borrowed on a favour.
If this is all alien to you and you haven’t got this far - check out this
Microphones
The most popular microphone for this is the SM57. Available from Shure for less than £100. It’s used in every studio in the world and is an industry standard. Absolutely perfect for aggressive guitar parts.
The next level up(but not necessarily an improvement) is to use a large diaphragm condenser.
The specialist level is to use a ribbon microphone.
Infinite budget level is a valve microphone.
Cheap - SM57 or similar dynamic - £85
Medium - Large Diaphragm Condenser - £100+
Expensive - Ribbon Microphone - £100 - £1000
Scrooge McDuck - Valve Condenser Microphone - £500-£5000
It’s not a case of more expensive means better. It’s more a series of different choices. So instead of having 12 guitars, maybe you have 8 guitars and 4 microphones. It’s common to use more than one microphone and mix between the two. For the price of an expensive effects pedal or a medium level guitar you could have the three main solutions.
The Shure SM57 is an industry standard for dynamics(£85). Rode NT1-A is a good entry level condenser(£130). Something to write home about is the Royer 121(£1000), although there are numerous ribbon mics from about £150. The Ferrari is the Neumann U87(£2000).
I’m just linking to Thomann because I’m lazy. Shop around and check out the second hand options.
In all cases, where you place the microphones in relation to the speaker has a big effect on the sound. I love putting a microphone behind the amp. Experiment experiment experiment.
Microphone pre-amp
So the microphone that’s recording the amp goes into a pre-amp. This brings it to a level that the audio equipment needs to make it useful. This happens automatically in the audio interface, but a bespoke piece of hardware for the job can add a lot of character to your sound.
Originally this took place in a mixing desk. This really is where investment gets infinite. Dave Grohl made a documentary about the Neve Desk from Sound City that recorded many great albums. It’s essentially a documentary on the magic of the correct pre-amp.
This is also an area where there aren’t as many industry standards because different jobs need different character and at the absolute top level there’s a bespoke solution which defines that studio, but I’ll try and give a few options.
Cheap
DBX 286/386 (£130)
There’s various solutions which don’t do a lot more than your audio interface or software plugins. They generally have lots of features - EQ and compression and a De-esser. I would urge anyone who is interested in recording to get one of them to play around with. They are great for understanding this stage of the signal chain. They also teach you to err on the side of caution in terms of how much you are doing to the sound. They aren’t an effect pedal.
In general, the more you spend, the less features you get. Eventually the units just do one job very well instead of offering value for money. This complicates this section though because some pre-amps are better for their compressor features or EQ features etc.
Mid range
In this area, believe it or not £500-1000 is the price range. It’s a lot of money for something that adds some relatively transparent pixie dust. Lots of different pre-amps try and re-create various mixing desk circuitry from history. Professional studios generally have a few different pre-amps for different situations. If you are buying new then the brands are Warm Audio, SPL, Black Lion audio and the like. If you are buying second hand or repairing something vintage, the options are endless and you can pick up a characterful bargain in return for some soldering knowledge.
There’s some nice tube driven stuff. Cos everyone loves a bit of glow:
SPL GOLDMIKE(£400)
This feels and sounds more expensive than it is.
After that you just spend more and more money trying to recreate Neve desks and the like:
WARM AUDIO WA73(£500)
This would be considered “entry level” for this world
Top end
You might as well collect vintage cars. New, you are looking at various Neve collaborations, Avalon and Manley. If you are thinking of dropping £5000 on a pre-amp, you probably don’t need to be reading this article. Just remember it’s only as good as the weakest link in your chain, so build up your expensive chain bit by bit.
It’s also worth remembering that many studios rent this stuff as and when they need it, so your fantasy kit might never be a mature adult decision for anyone.
Compressors
Few areas of audio processing are more mystical than the world of compressors. A full understanding of compressors requires a lifetime experience in the dark arts. There’s different solutions for different things and the most expensive ones do little other than add a je ne sais quoi that no one can quite put their finger on.
There’s two types of compressors(experts are baulking here cos it’s not true). Compressors that are functional and make the instrument easier to mix and compressors which are musical and give sounds more character(See! I wasn’t lying)
The first type can be achieved by software, but hardware units can give you a better feel for how they work. The DBX units above are a good example of this. Either coupled with a pre-amp and EQ or just a standalone compressor. They are so popular for live work that you can pick one up for £40. Some mixing desks even have compressors with simple parameter control built in.
Play around with them, watch tutorials. Play with software. Start with presets. Get to know them and err on the side of caution when actually using them in real life situations.
In terms of hardware expenditure, compressors are all about the second category - adding colour.
Back in black and white days, it was more difficult to construct a perfectly working functional and transparent compressor like the ones mentioned above, so some designs used FET transformers, some used optical circuits, some used valves etc. In each case they had different functions and treated different instruments in different ways.
Audio studio types who know their onions laugh at you boasting about saving up for that £250 overdrive. Cos they are saving up for a £5000 piece of vintage valve technology which will look like it came from some sort of steampunk time machine.
Costs are infinite and even if you do buy one. Someone on the internet will tell you that you have the wrong production year and you should have got the one with the different shaped knob. Once you do buy one, you might even need two for stereo processing
For the purposes of trying to encourage guitarists to spend more wisely, here’s some ideas that could help you understand the expensive gear in the next recording studio you visit.
Valve compressors
These are compressors like the transparent ones in your local music venue, but they are complicated by being driven by a valve circuit. There are a few “cheap” versions. ART make one(I’ve had two pass through my hands and they both broke before I could test them). TL audio make one(White ones get a bad name. Purple/Blue/Grey ones get a good name).
Interestingly, Warm Audio don’t make one. I’m guessing they don’t think it’s possible to make one at their price point.
Then there’s “Fake” ones. Which have a wee light behind the valve to light it up instead of driving the signal through it(Behringer used to make one). There’s various pedals which incorporate valves. Valves don’t run on 9V batteries. A “real” one is sometimes called a “variable Mu” compressor. There’s lots of specialist brands and boutique solutions. Manley is a well known brand. At this level it’s back to rental and fantasy and going to a good studio.
Annoyingly, the second hand market is complicated by the fact that valves and tubes are more complicated and dangerous to fix and maintain(You could die - but you’ll die with warmer mids). The circuits are noisy and it’s a real art to get it purring like a classic car. In short; Leave it to the professionals.
LA-2A
One of the classic compressors is the Teletronix LA-2A. It adds a smooth warmth to everything through a tube driven optical compression circuit. It is commonly cloned in software plugins. There’s cheap hardware versions(Klark Teknik[£350] gets a good name), medium hardware versions(Warm audio[£700]) and expensive hardware versions(Universal Audio[£4000]). It has two knobs. Play with them. You’ll like it.
FET Compressors
Another classic is the 1176. It’s the opposite of the LA-2A. It’s famous for making things aggressive and bitey. Most famous for its use on drums(seriously try it). I also really like using it with electric guitars. Sadly it has no valves so it’s not as cool to the layman as the Beheringer with the light bulb.
There are a whole bunch of clones of this cos you can build it without messing with valves and killing yourself. The Klark Teknik one gets a bad name. It’s Warm Audio’s cheapest compressor and then there’s various vintage ones and different coloured ones and bespoke ones. Lots of software clones. Because it’s aggressive and bitey, you can really hear what it’s doing quite quickly so for this reason I think all guitarists should have a little play around and get to know how they work.
Transparent compressors - but good ones
Spending some time with some software compressors or some simple hardware compressors could really improve your sound. It will give you a better understanding of how parts can sit in a mix. You can then deliver better solutions for other people’s songs and get more work. More work means more money. More money means you are ever closer to living in a steampunk time machine lit by the glow of valves.
I only wrote this section so that I can write about FMR Audio. They make really affordable compressors. They are called things like RNC(Really nice compressor) - £190. Simple. Musical. Functional.
Equalisation
The thing that took me the longest to get onboard with was spending lots of money on EQ. I know about Hertz, Decibels and Q. Surely it’s just a maths equation. I think we’ll just let software plugins handle that. Eventually you accept that EQ is just a frequency variable gain circuit and there’s lots of ways to make a gain circuit, so there’s different ways to add character.
Despite it being slightly counter intuitive, different EQs can add a lot to your sound. This is due to how the circuit’s are constructed, but also how the interface is constructed. Which parameters you can alter. A wah pedal is an EQ parameter you change with your foot.
Like compressors, there’s EQ rack units in every live venue. They are functional, the same as a mixing desk. Get one. Add it to your chain. Play with it. Accept it’s not an effect. It’s a tool.
I’ve got two tips in this area. Before you turn something up, work out if you can do the same thing by turning something down. It often makes more sense.
Second tip. Many EQ setups have High gain, Low Gain, Mid Gain and then mid frequency. The frequency is fixed on the High and Low gain but not on the mid. This is because the most interesting frequencies for our ears are in the mid range. So what you do for the sound in question is you whack up the mid gain and then sweep through the mid gain knob from low to high. What you are looking for is a particular piece of character in the sound that you want to raise or lower. On a simple desk, you only have one choice.
“Yuck… that acoustic guitar sounds really muffled at 600hz”
“There’s a lovely crack comes off that snare drum at 1200hz”
Then you leave the knob there and change the gain knob accordingly.
Sounds dead simple, but it changed my use of EQ for the better.
EQ hardware
If you are a pedal aficionado, you’ll know that EQ is functional, but not wonderfully sexy. Enter the Pultec EQ. Lovely Valve Gain circuits with big sexy knobs from yesteryear. It looks like a control panel from a bond villain's nuclear power station based lair.
As with the other sections. Klark Teknik(£200) and nice. Warm Audio(£500) and really nice. everything above that is bespoke and expensive. If you can’t afford to spend £15,000 on an original Pultec, you can even rent one.
Beyond pultec there are various solutions on offer. These are the cheapest racks in this article. Try and get your hands on as many as possible, just so that you can play with EQ in different ways and start to understand the subtleties
Conclusion
So that’s basically it. It’s a huge area of study and some will object to me trying to summarise it in such a way, but If you know more than I do and want to add in your corrections and annoyances , please do so in the comments.
For about £1000, guitarists can start to have something approaching a professional recording channel. Once you decide that you really love a Klark Teknik Pultec EQ clone, you might upgrade to the Warm Audio one. It’s a tree you can continue climbing for the rest of your life.
One word of warning. Most recordings need multiple channels, so it could make more sense to have 2 channels of recording with three £500 outboard units than to have one with three £1000 outboard units.
Once you consider that 4 channels is a minimum for drum recording and 16 isn’t unusual, you start to realise why professional studios cost so much.
“That £5000 preamp sounds lovely. If only we had 8 of them”.
Luckily it’s very much a buyers market. Studio prices are being squeezed because it’s quite a competitive environment and a lot of guitarists value their super expensive £250 overdrive pedal more than a wall of expensive preamps, but hopefully this article gives you a bit of an idea of what you are paying for; what to look for and what that wall of steampunk time machine technology is doing.
Most of your local studios list their equipment on their website. You don’t need to be an expert in all this stuff, but it could be valuable to start to recognise the stuff that’s useful to your sound. If you are a metal band and they are a synth studio, it might not be the best fit.
Few studios are set up as a money making exercise. They are generally labours of love and money pits. Once they’ve paid their bills, any extras will generally get spent on more cool stuff, so you should use them and see it as an investment in your local music community.
One word of warning, I once did live sound for a bass player who had 75 effects pedals wired in series. His bass sounded like a ukulele when none of them were turned on. Less is more in this world. I’m encouraging people to get in about as much as they can and play with it to understand it, but remember that the final sounds you deliver probably don’t need everything to be turned on at the same time. The use of these chains are all about subtly improving what’s already there in your guitar, amp and pedals. It’s about experimentation and nuance.
Enjoy!
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