(Apologies if this is in the wrong forum. Feel free to move if it necessary.)
One of my favourite acts to record these days is
Envelope 3 (on the LMA
here; Env 3 is the stage name of David Lauzon, formerly the guitar player in nero), who does instrumental music based on acoustic guitar, run through effects and loopers, along with synths, and percussive lines created by banging on the body of the guitar.
On stage, he uses two amplifiers: a Rivera 2x12 combo, one of the ones they build for acoustic guitars, and a Mark Bass combo. The as-played acoustic guitar goes through the Rivera (after effects), and the synths and any looped parts go through the Mark Bass.
It occurred to me that each of these amps has an XLR DI output, so I tried an experiment the last time I recorded him. As well as run my stage-lip Superlux > UA-5 > JB3 setup, I also ran XLR cables from the DI outputs to the XLR inputs of a Behringer UB1002 mixer I have, dialed the gains on it pretty far back, and ran the tape outputs to my only other recorder, a Sharp MD-MT15 minidisc. I panned the sources hard left and right, making it not really a stereo recording, but a multi-track recording, with "multi" in this case meaning "two".
The results weren't too bad. The DI outputs were really hot (the peak LEDs on the mixer were blinking at me all night), but the recording is pretty clear-sounding.
Has anyone done anything like this before? I tried it in part because Dave wants to record a live show multi-tracked (e.g., to an 8- or 16-track DAW, with various bits of his rig assigned to different tracks; he hasn't tried to set this up in a while, as his rig is huge already), so it seemed like this would be a neat thing to try. He's doing a show two weeks from now, and I'm hoping to try it again, so any tips or ideas people had would be appreciated. Thanks!
Aloha,
Brad
Topic: Using amplifier DI outputs? (Read 1471 times)