P
petethorn
New member
Ok y'all, I'm super excited about this... my old studio, which was cool but was essentially a 1 bedroom house with one adjoining wall, is no more. I've moved my home, and decided I'd also get a REAL studio space- someplace that I can really do some serious guitar tracking!
My next door neighbor (at the old place) happened to be co-owner of a company that mainly does music for advertising. They have a commercial space that they built out into 5 "control rooms", and one shared live room. Each of the "control rooms" has tie lines into the live room. The thing is, they rarely use the live room, only occasionally for voice overs or sometimes vocals.... So when my neighbor mentioned that one of the tenants was leaving and they'd have a room opening up, I was very interested indeed... I Imagined the possibilities, hmm, if I wanted to, finally I could track a 4-12" in a real room.... I thought about it for, oh, 3 seconds or so, and then I said "I'm In".
So in my old space, I had a 1-12" iso'd in a closet- this is how I recorded all my youtube vid demos, and my album "Guitar Nerd". Like this:
I'd totally bury the cab under soft packing blankets, etc:
Worked great, but cmon, it was a bit ghetto!! now I can track a cab in a room! Here's the room:
You can see my new clear sonic Amppac baffle surrounding a cab on the right. it consists of plexiglass panels and sound absorption stuff they call "Sorber panels". I got the Amppac 31 model- it's big enough to surround a 4-12". I got this just in case. The room is double wall, floating floor, etc etc but there is four other guys working in this building (usually during biz hours, in the evenings I think it'll often be all mine), so I was concerned about my loud rock stylings bumming out the others, even with the iso room. There is also another guys studio that has a double glass window looking through into the live room, I was most concerned about disturbing him:
So today, I surrounded a cab with the Clearsonic Amppac baffle:
I then closed the top:
...and plugged in a Badger 30 and cranked it up to 5 in full 30 watt power mode, and I was amazed at how much sound the baffle soaked up! You could talk to someone in the room, conversation volume, no problem, with a 30w amp blaring away. It feels like you cut the volume in half, for sure. Outside the room in the hallway and on the other side of the glass in the adjoining control room, only some muted low frequencies come through, very little- the guy who works in there said it'd be no concern at all, unless he was maybe tracking a quiet acoustic or something. This was a huge relief! I can track at least a 30 watt amp with a 1 or 2-12" all day long. If I want to do a 50 or 100w amp into a 4-12", that'll probably be ok too, i'd guess, as I usually use my Faustine or Aracom attenuators anyways, since they sound so good.
After biz hours, i think I can just have at it, no baffle, no attenuation, which is like a dream come true.
Now onto the control room- this is a work in progress. I have a guy that's going to completely sound treat and tune the room, and do the wiring. The door needs to be addressed as its got a gap at the bottom. I'll have 8 mic/audio lines into the live room, as well as 2 speaker cable lines. Here's a pic of the room now, long way to go still:
Within 2 weeks, there'll be:
- A custom cabinet on the far wall with 6 shelves for amp heads, and places to store pedals all along the top. There'll be easy patching out of the heads, into the 2 speaker cable tie lines. I've always had my heads stacked beside me, but this'll just be more slick, bitchin and organized! I'll keep a selection of fuzz/od/distortion, mod, delay, and filter FX within arms reach, and my road and little studio pedalboard rigs will be in there ready to go.
-full acoustic treatment- bass traps in all the corners, a "cloud" over the mix position, etc etc
-vibed out with guitars hanging, cool aesthetic and functional accouterments, etc. I want this to be a simple yet kickass guitar recording haven! And a great place to practice and shed as well.
As soon as this is all done, I've got a backlog of gear demos to kick out, as well as 2 songs for my GF Trisha's album to finish up, and some rig programming for upcoming gigs...
OK that's it for now, I'll post pics as things are progressing! Thanks for reading all this, you're a geek if you made it this far! Ha!
. Is that 57 right in the center of the cone? How far back is it?
