Herbert in "studio" - my few thoughts

zerotolerance

New member
(Sorry for any mistakes.)

My friend decided to follow his dreams and open a studio. Since he is still buying needed equipment and is not recording anything yet, I had an opportunity to use his rooms to record my own stuff. I took my own laptop and interface and began an adventure on unexplored ground.

I bought my Herbert without playing it first because there aren't many Diezels where I live. We also don't have a dealer in our country. I bought it 13.11.2013, it was a gift for myself for my birthday and since that date my Herbie stood almost unused due to big amount of work. I played it maybe few times. During all this time I was wondering if I did good selling my other amps to buy this one.

Now I know that I did good. I realized it when I plugged it in, set all knobs at noon (except presence and deep of course) and there it was, THE SOUND. No tweaking, no other bullshit. Now I know why all the good studios have Herberts in their equipment.

A bit more about my setup: I have Herbert MKI with KT77s and German made, front loaded cabinet with g12k100 speakers. For records I use TC Electronic Impact Twin interface and Sennheiser e906 microphone along with Shure SM57. Now, after this long introduction :D thoughts :

1. LOWS LOWS LOWS, oh my god how this setup holds the lows. I use Gibson Les Paul guitars, one tuned to E standard and other to B standard. I always had problems with bass in my setup, it was loose and gave muddy feeling (especially in B standard), now the problems are gone. Bass is there, where it is supposed to be. It actually reminded me one of Motorhead songs where Lemmy sings "Now the guitar speaks, gonna drive you nuts, power under your hand", it gives the power to me :D

2. THE TONE, OH MY GOD THE TONE! I think it cured my depression :D When I played this amp "for real" after almost half a year I couldn't stop smiling. I felt like a 8 year old boy who got a new toy. To be honest, I go there every day and I still have the same feeling, it's just great.

3. Microphone placement. It always gave me a hard times, too fizzy, too muddy, too FUCKED. I put a microphone in one of the common recording spots and the tone was there, without tweaking, without making me pissed off. I asked my friend to move the microphones to other spots and it still was there. Tone differed but I could definitely use it in a mix or in "live" situation.

4. Gain structure. I think I should mention it because I never could get this kind of "crunchiness" without Maxon OD808 or other tubescreamer.



I haven't finished my work yet so I will probably write some more thoughts later and/or add some recorded clips since there aren't ANY good clips with Herbert and g12k100 FL cab on YouTube or Tone Finder.



I want to thank both Peter Diezel and Peter Stapfer for making such great amplifiers and cabs, I want to thank for making my (guitarist) life better.

Disclaimer: I am not sponsored or endored by Diezel in any way. Nobody made me to write anything, I had some inner feeling to do this :)
 
I would recommend V30's. Herbert meshes really well with that sizzle and bite that V30's have. K100's to me were to neutral and dry sounding. Plus, when I had all K100's it wouldn't handle bass worth a crap without farting out. I think wiring is fine, because when I swapped to V30's I had tons of tight bass. Those K100's might have been screwed up or something, I think the guy I got the cab from may have did something to them, especially since the cab was out of phase when I got it.
 
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