Day IV. The tones of frustration

.Wednesday, March 30

(Guitar/amp Setup)


Well, we finished the drums last night. Cris was 100% on point and so far we are on schedule! I can't say enough about the drum tone on this record, its HUGE. This is the first record we've done with Cris, and he was also one of the main proponents of taking the band in a new direction, so it was incredibly gratifying to finally hear the full potential of what he has been constructing over the past 8 months.


We finished the drums at about 2 AM and then had to pack up all the guitar and bass gear from our practice space (which is where we recorded the drums) and take it all to Will's house, where we will be tracking the rest of the record. I think everyone finally retired for the day at about 4-5 AM, so needless to say, it was a LONG night.


After waking up and getting some late breakfast, we got right to getting the guitars set up and immediately started shooting guitar tones. This is one thing we were NOT worried about. We've always been pretty confident about our tone live, and we have great equipment to work with. For a frame of reference, this is what we had to work with-


AMP HEADS:
EVH 5150 III
Peavey 6505+
Splawn Pro Stock
Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier


CABS:
Mesa Boogie Oversized 4x12
Peavey JSX 4x12
Marshall 1960A 4x12


We started off with the obvious choice, the most expensive, and in all other cases, best combination we had available to us. This was the 5150 III through the Mesa Cab. This is Erik's live tone for the most part, with a few different stages of overdrive and pedals giving the rig a bit of color. After tweaking mic placement, amp settings, and anything else we could think of for about 3 - 4 hours, we finally realized that this combo was not giving us what we were looking for. To make a long story short, we started out testing all of the equipment we actually own, and none of it was really giving us what we wanted, so we went back down to our practice space and  grabbed the Splawn, Mesa, and the Marshall cab, which all belong to our wonderful practice mates THE F-UPS, and their head honcho, and our good friend Travis.


(As a side note: Thank you Travis, we seriously appreciate your openness and trust with us using all of your sweet equipment!)


Anyway, again, to shorten a mind numbingly long story, we finally stumbled accross our tone at about 10 PM. It came in the least expected way, through the tiny little Marshall cab. Would I use this thing live? Most likely not, however, it has a perfect amount of clarity that we were looking for on the record.


I guess the strange thing is that I wouldn't exactly say that when we found the tone we were "excited." Because of the amount of time it took, and the ridiculous amount of fucking around we had to do to actually get to this point, it was actually more of a relief than anything. I don't mean that to sound pessimistic, or as if we just finally settled, because that isn't the case at all. We weren't looking for a "HOLY SHIT THAT GUITAR TONES IS FUCKING INSANE" this time around.  We needed something a bit more laid back, with a lot more definition, and a lot more room to play with the different levels of distortion/clean/overdrive, and effects that we have strewn throughout the album. Maybe relief is a bad word, because we knew what we needed, and we finally found it. Confident might be a better way to describe the feeling we had, as in "YES, this is exactly what we are looking for."


It was a long day, and again, we have Steve to thank for not ever saying "that's good enough." He is pushing us to work, and helping us take this record to the level that it needs to be to translate, and for that we love him! haha, this record would have never been able to come together like it has without him.
Time to get some rest, rhythm tracks go down in the morning.

-T