Anomaly Production Trivia #3 - Guitars

June 5, 2019

The guitar track was recorded at Brendan's house.  Its a simple bedroom setup like most recording setups these days.  The basic signal chain for the recording was not just a simple amp to mic setup like normal.  The approach taken is what some refer to as the Clayman Tone.  Glenn Fricker of the Youtube channel, Spectre Sound Studios created a video on how this tone was created so we decided to use the similar technique; and boy was it a REVELATION!  The tone created from this was much better than we expected!

Basically you use two microphones, one ON axis and the other OFF axis and then blend them in a small 2 or more channel mixer.  Each mic has a different capture purpose, like one mic is a dark mic and the other is a brighter microphone.  You can then blend them using the mixing desk to get the tone you want and then record just that tone!  The idea is to settle on a sound you like to begin with and stay with.  We did just that with guitar tracking and the result was spectacular!

We also recorded the clean tone tracks of the guitars to use to blend with some digital amps but a decision was made to not use them in the final mix.

Signal Chain

In Order

• Ibanez RG560
• Radial Engineering J48 DI Box
• Pedal board
  • Tuner / Buffer
  • Custom 2 Channel A/B box
    • HBE Detox EQ pedal
    • BMC Guitar FX xCF-1 pedal (experimental distortion pedal)
    • BMC Guitar FX Lithium Overdrive pedal
• Orange Dual Terror amp
  • Tiny Terror channel with the Gain on 2 o'clock position
• Sunn T412 cabinet
• Sennheiser E609 microphone (ON speaker axis - WGS ET65 speaker)
• Cheapo electronics store vocal microphone (OFF speaker axis - Celestion G12 T75 speaker)
• Carillon X-6 mixer
• Secondhand MAudio BOX2
• Reaper DAW

In 99% of the tracks, the guitar was recorded twice on two different tracks but was NOT mixed the same way as your general run of the mill Left Right guitar tracking.  The guitar were mixed in a such a way that one guitar presents as the mono, centre signal and the other presents as the side, stereo signal. 

The idea for the guitar mixing was to present a guitar sound that sounds like ONE guitar and not two different guitars.  The band only has one guitar player and we wanted present a mix that sounded like one guitarist not more.  This method also allows the music to sound good in both mono (phone speakers etc..) and stereo as well.

The overdriven guitar were mixed quite subtly.  The flabby bottom end was rolled off to open up room in the tail to the drums and bass.  The mids and highs added to bring a bit more sparkle to the top end.  Normally the Dual Terror is quite a honky sounding amp but the two mic / mixing desk method give much better handling on the tone.

 

Clean Tones

The same overdrive tone was used to create the clean tones but this was achieved using the HBE Detox EQ pedal.  This pedal is a fantastic tool for cleaning up a distorted tone to give a nice clean tone with a slight amount of tube / pedal overdrive "hair" on the note.

Lead tones

The xCF-1 pedal was used in conjunction with the Lithium overdrive and amplifier overdriven tubes to create a nice creamy sounds.  This is how the tone is played live as well.  Delays and FX were added on after the recording.

Acoustic guitar

An acoustic was used for some solos and clean work on Transverse.  Recorded directly into the DAW via the J48 DI box.