Guitar Reamping Guide Contents: Situations when reamping is helpful Why do I need a separate box for reamping? I have been ok without so far Here is what I use in my studio Basic Steps to Reamping Guitar (As in the Video) Getting Signals out of your DAW and Monitoring Where does that xlr cable come from? I have an M Audio Fast Track Pro with no additional outputs...i still don t get how to do this. Help! I have a MBox it doesn't have outputs for each channel. What do I do if I want to reamp? Explain How to Monitor the Reamped Guitar Sound Video Links Situations when reamping is helpful: You can reamp anytime you are using guitar amp simulators plug ins, or pedals. Instead of sifting through presets on the plug in, you are playing the guitar track into a real amp, and getting tones. You have the amp, but might want to experiment with different pedal combinations. Reamping lets you go into anything hi impedance. You want to use a studio compressor or effect unit in your guitar chain. Record as usual. On playback place high end compressors, EQ, or any other studio effects BEFORE the reamp box. Anything working on line level signal stays up stream of the reamp box. Anything hi impedance stays down stream (after) the reamp box. Buffer for long runs to an amp room. You can play in one room, and have your amp in the other. Plug your guitar into the DI box (but do not use the Thru jack), and send your DI signal immediately back out to the reamp box in the other room. Use hardware or DSP monitoring rather than Software monitoring so that there is no noticeable delay.
Reamping lets you be two people. You can focus on the guitar playing first, then focus on the engineering and guitar tone part second. Late Night Recording. You can t turn up your amp loud late at night. Record the idea in your head now, and record it tomorrow during the day. Future Proof Your Guitar Tracks. You don t have the amp you need to get the desired sound right now, but you will in the future. You can record your ideas now, use the amp simulator plug or pedal to get the tones, and reamp with the ideal amp when you have it. Bass Guitar. Bass guitar is commonly recorded using a DI box in the control room. For good reason, bass players are able to hear themselves better in this setting, but reamping gives you the option of using a real amp. Bass that is compressed by a overdriven tube amp may be more mixable and less taxing on your DAW than adding plug in compressors. Vocal. Small harmonica amps love to reamp vocal. Record a stereo room sound when reamping your vocal tracks, and you have a fantastic vocal sound, and effect. I like to delay my room sound by about 30 80 ms) You can choose to only use the room sound of the reamped vocal with your dry vocal, for a really great rock vocal effect. Distorted Drum Loops. Reamping gives you access to all your guitar gear, not just the amp itself. You can add some delay, overdrive, reverb, and tremolo to drum loops. Why do I need a separate box for reamping? I have been ok without so far... Yeah it is true that you can use a passive DI box to reamp. It will push signals either way thru it s circuit and magnetics. You will need to turn the DI track down 30dB in some cases just to keep the transformer from distorting the signal as it passes through the box. This doesn t seem like a big deal but it is a hassle and may not always work. Can I plug a guitar amp directly into my interface? Yes, you can try. However the circuits aren't designed to work this way. Balanced line signals are a different amplitude than guitar signals (~1.23 volts for line level signals at +4dBu), they have three parts instead of just two (Balanced means three parts: Hot, Neutral, Ground), and they have lower electrical pressure (Ohms). In a pinch you could try it, but good luck. There s many factors going on here and what may work on a foot long run to a pedal may work better than a 50 foot run from the DAW to a vintage tube amp. Professional studios don t have time for issues to come up, and better results come by using proper techniques in your signal chain. Here is what I use in my studio (In order starting at the guitar): Type 85 Country DI Box (Use phantom power for better fidelity) Mogami Mic Cable W2552 Cable Seventh Circle Audio Preamp T15
MOTU 24IO 88.2, 24 bit, 20 db of headroom (DAW) MOTU 24IO ¼ Output TRS to XLR cable Reamp Box PRORMP by Radial Guitar Cable ¼ TS cable Mogami W2524 Basic Steps to Reamping Guitar (As in the Video) 1. Insert a DI box (That has a thru jack) as if it were a guitar pedal into your guitar chain. Anything that comes before the DI pedal will be part of the guitar sound. Anything that comes after the pedal will be preplaced in the process of reamping. 2. Set up a microphone and arm two tracks for recording. One track for the signal your DI box is hearing, and another track for the amp sound that your guitar player is using to perform to. 3. Record the DI Box signal with 20 db of headroom, and at 24 bits. Also record the amp sound as it can be helpful to hear rough mixes if you are not going to be reamping for a while. 4. When you are ready to reamp, send the previously recorded DI track to a dedicated output on your interface. This output goes to the reamp box, and then to your first pedal or amp. Getting Signals Out of your DAW and Monitoring How to get the signal out of the daw? Where does that xlr cable come from? You can get the signal out of your DAW with any line level signal. I have a MOTU 24io which gives me 24 outputs, which is 1/4 inch jacks. I use a cable to get me from the TRS to XLR. The reamp box takes it from there, from balanced XLR to TS. At a minimum, if you have a stereo output for your monitors, you could even use the "left" or "right" signal if you had nothing else...but this would mean that you would be running on one monitor while your reamping of coarse. Some line outputs are lower level ( 10) which won't be a problem, as the job of the reamping box is attenuating (lowering volume) anyhow. Most reamping boxes have volume knobs on them, so you would just have it attenuating less if your output is of the 10dB type, versus the +4dB type. I have an M Audio Fast Track Pro with no additional outputs...i still don t get how to do this. Help! Yes, look on the back and you'll see on the right at the top you have TRS outputs. Do not use the "inserts" below, these are wired totally differently. One of these TRS outputs is what you need. The reamp box is taking that TRS and converting it to a "TS" cable, meaning Tip and
Sleeve...only two wires/connectors...balanced to unbalanced. All you need to know is that you'll have to unplug a monitor/speaker for a few minutes as you use that output for a reamp guitar out. Or perhaps see if your monitors will accept that 3/4 RCA style jack/output, and then specify this output in your DAW so that your master output is 3/4 instead of 1/2 TRS jacks. I have a MBox it doesn't have outputs for each channel. What do I do if I want to reamp? Take the DI guitar track and pan it right. Take every other track and pan it all the way left. Now your system is divided and you will have a solo DI track coming out of your right studio monitor. Turn off your right monitor and plug that signal into a reamp box. A lot of times on interfaces with many outputs I will use a direct out for a track it will never go through the master fader in my DAW. In the case of a 2 output interface like the MBox and many others, you have to think of it as Channel One and Channel Two, instead of Left and Right. Explain How to Monitor the Reamped Guitar Sound There are two common places that you can listen to a signal. You will always have software monitoring available via the DAW which allows you to hear the signals coming in, but with a lot of latency. Most of the time it is best to keep turned off. The second common monitoring method is with DSP mixers that allow you to hear the signal right at the interface. The DSP mixer is a separate program from your DAW and allows you to hear signals from all of your live microphones, while the DAW feeds the previously recorded content. With software monitoring ( MBox, and other 2 output interfaces ), pan the track left so that the signal won t be sent back out to the amp. Otherwise you ll get feedback! With DSP monitoring, turn on the monitoring for that guitar amp microphone and pan the monitoring left. If you are monitoring in real time, you must pan that signal all the way left. Center panned is sending the signal to both channels, and will create feedback with the amp. If you do not have a way of panning the signal so it doesn t feedback into the amp, then you must disable the monitoring for that signal and make short test recordings. One trick I used was to record a handheld sm58 so I could yell out reminders of where I was putting the mic. Video Links
If you have any questions please email me: Ryan@CreativeSoundLab.TV 60 Second Tutorial: https://youtu.be/fyikfoh_xf4 Full Length Tutorial: https://youtu.be/pmmhynzn0pe