The Amptone Reamp Project: Collective Dry and Amp-Processed Guitar Files

This 2006 page replaces the 2001 page Reamp.htm.

Usefulness of Reamping

Creating and sharing files in this shared Reamp approach has the following benefits:

It frees your hands and mind to focus on quickly trying many settings for your gear.� You can then play guitar through your gear using those settings.�
You get to hear other people's guitar playing through your own guitar amp and effects.� The dry file can contain string feedback from a sustainer.
You get to hear your own playing through other people's guitar amp and effects, when they download and process the dry file you created and then send the processed result for uploading.
Dialing-in sounds to match an album sound; it helps toward being able to easily get good specific tones matching albums -- with whatever gear you currently are using.� Frequently and easily alternate between playing the g rig on the monitors and an album track on the monitors: mixer's Tape Out to RS Source Selector A jacks, and soundcard's stereo 1/8" Spk Out to RS Source Selector B jacks, and RS Source Selector Out jacks to the amp'd monitors.
Comparing gear or settings -- by having the exact same guitar playing go through the gear; to a/b gear with the playing absolutely held constant
To A/B to compare gear across sites
To practice quickly dialing-in different sounds out of various gear approaches
To learn to recognize pickup types including determining whether you need to get another guitar with a different pickup configuration.
To quickly run a large number of experiments with gear hookups and settings.
To break-in a guitar speaker, using an isocab
To expose yourself to playing approaches that bring out different qualities in your existing gear
Playing style is one component of Tone; this isolates playing style from any particular amp gear
Can hear pickups you don't have.� Including pickups that have different eq; can learn the extent to which pickup eq affects an amp's sound.
With conventional samples, the playing is mixed together with the gear tone, raising the question of whether the gear sounds good mostly because of playing or gear.� This enables feeding the same playing to other gear, to see if any junky gear sounds just as great with such great playing put through it.� Settles the question of how much of tone is in playing vs. gear.� Like recombining heads & cabs, enables recombining playing and gear - even remote gear.
Future: live reamping: Play dry into network, remote person processes it real-time, transmits it back.
My playing is limited, my guitars (pickups) are limited, and my amps are limited.� This way I can hear my playing in others' gear, and others' playing in my gear.
Can separate the playing, the recording of the playing, the dialing-in, the pickup selection, the production, the final recording/mastering, etc -- including who does the playing vs. the dialing-in (the reamping/production).� Sep's the production of the dry-g from the production of the reamp'd sound.� In studio, the post-mic sound is what matters, not the g-spk sound; the g-spk sound doesn't matter.
Leaves hands free to pay full attention to A/B dialing-in vs. album sound.� It's the only way to truly be able to nail or max'ly approximate alb sound.
Helps manuf'ers demo their gear online -- they don't have to figure out how to get good playing; they just have to learn how to mic.� Their gear won't suffer from inferior playing.
Helps manuf'ers tune their gear to various pickups and playing styles.� A time saver for designers.� Not to replace playing live g, but to supplement it.� They combine their own dry files with downloaded ones.
Competitive framework for who can outdo others in ever-better mic technique.� We can hear whether various mic techniques really do sound better or not.� Chance to practice and work together to get better at micing/recording/production of g tone.
To determine whether attenuator gear or modelling gear is successful tonewise.
You can reamp into Vox Valvetronix Return jack to demonstrate that the 12AX7 as power tube produces an inferior distortion response compared to the EL84 eg. Fender Blues. Jr.� Reamp a dry-guitar file into:

� Input jack of VOX Valvetronix AD120VT combo amp (digital preamp>12AX7 as power tube>dummy load>ss amp)

� Return jack of VOX Valvetronix AD120VT combo amp (between digital preamp and 12AX7 power amp)

� Input jack of Fender Blues. Jr. (all-tube single-channel combo amp w/ multi gain stages always present)

� Reverb tank return plug of Fender Blues. Jr. (between preamp gain stages and tube power amp)

The outcome will be better gear, when integrated with my various advice and approaches.� Both better digital modelling and better power-tube-based "modelling" and better feature packaging.

Dry files should target specific popular tracks to A/B against -- there should be a particular sonic goal that people can a/b, reproducible/provably a "success".� The Amptone Reamp Contest would award the prize gear to those who, as in a tiathalon, excell at the various skills: distortion voicing, miking, and production.

Compare the sound of traditional gear set up in an iso-room to the sound of attenuators (eg power scaling, hotplate), sim/modelling (eg flextone, Ampulator, analog-based modelling amps), dummy load rigs (eg Valvetronix, Hot Plate/Power Block).

The goal is to be able to easily get good specific tones, and to master getting the best amp sounds possible from any gear, and get faster at obtaining and exploring sounds.� For example, even if you have a London Power and Emery Sound Superbaby, and a huge amp collection, how are you going to figure out *quickly* which pickup and tube type and biasing-setting and speaker and overdrive pedal to use?�

The ideal way is have well-played dry-guitar playing of the song tone you're emulating, on an mp3 player, to continuously play while you run through many many configs quickly.� There's way better playing this way (more accurate, optimized, low hum/buzz, the playing is unbroken while you reach out to change settings), a greater range of pickup sounds immediately available this way, no string breakage halts, no stopping to retune.� You can't do gear hookups while a guitar strapped on, and if you try, you'll be ultra-slow.� Reamp approach supplements live g approach we're all too familiar with.�

Optimal A/B'ing is only possible w/ reamp.� A helpful additional way to determine whether you've nailed the sound, even including the whole chain to the monitors (not just at the g spk) -- apples to apples, from the recording/pa/producer's/mixing-engineer's point of view.� Other advantages: no plucking is picked up in the mics.

Note: you can turn down the guitar's volume when playing quiet parts of dry file to record.

Email me mp3 files of your dry, direct, unprocessed guitar playing � from guitar to hard disc.� Other instruments are useful, too: harmonica, violin, bass � unprocessed.� I'll upload the files here.� Please specify which pickup selection and type is used.

Download files from here of dry guitar, or use the dry guitar file you made, and put it on your portable MP3 player.� Feed the signal from there (with no bass boost or eq) at the same level as a guitar, into your miked tube amp or other processing equipment, to get a polished recording studio track on your hard drive.� Email me the processed file, with a description of the processing.� I'll upload the files here.

To contribute to this project, you can create new dry guitar files, or process an existing dry file, use it to dial-in good sounds on your equipment, and then email me a good processed file to upload.

How to Create a Dry-Guitar File for Reamping

Play guitar directly into the sound card, using an EQ pedal (on Bypass) as a buffer, without adding any processing.
Use a utility such as the Windows Sound Recorder or Roxio AudioCentral Sound Editor or ProTools to record.
Use the sound recording utility to save the result as an .mp3 file at 256 kbps (2 channels; mono is better).� Name the file to indicate which pickup selection and type was used.
Transfer the dry mp3 file to a portable mp3 player.
Played the dry file into the EQ pedal and then into the guitar amp (or guitar preamp/processor).
Drive a guitar speaker inside an isolation box (a cab inside a box or two) in the basement, connected by a 50' speaker cable (the recording studio isolation booth approach).� Or, use a power attenuator to drive the guitar speaker in the control room.
Put two mics near the speaker's center.� Run both mic cables back upstairs to the control room, into a small mixer that has 3 tone controls for each mic channel, or into a software mixer with tone controls for each mic channel.
Put both mics at the same level, without nearing clipping.� Freely swing the channel tone controls so that the comb filtering sounds best.� Connect the mixer to the soundcard Line In jack.
Turn down the guitar amp's master volume.� Use a pre-distortion EQ pedal and the amp's preamp Gain control to dial-in a good preamp distortion sound, where the bass, mid, and treble are each distorted to the amount you want (clean, compressed, or distorted).� Then use the amp's tone stack (assuming it's between the preamp distortion and the power tubes) along with the amp's Master Volume control to dial-in a good power-tube distortion sound, where the bass, mid, and treble are each distorted to the amount you want (clean, compressed, or distorted).
A/B compare the resulting sound to a particular song on an album that you are trying to match for tone.
Check the dialed-in sound by playing your own guitar into the amp, using the settings you dialed-in.
Play the dry guitar file into the amp again.� Use the recording software to record the processed result.� Save the result as an .mp3 file with a generous bit rate to avoid audible lossy compression.
Email the file to me for uploading; send the dry guitar file if its not here yet, and the processed file, with some description.

Example of the layout of dry and processed files in the resulting online library:

Dry File 1. Blues Harp (harmonica).

Harp played by ___.� __ MB.

File 1 through Fender Blues Jr. driving the Blues Jr's speaker in the Demeter SSC-1 isolation cab, with SM57 mic.� Processed by Michael Hoffman.

Processed file: ...

Dry File 2. Single-coil neck pickup.

Guitar played by Michael Hoffman.� __ MB.

Processed file: ...

Dry File 3. Riff from Van Halen's song Running with the Devil.

Guitar played by Michael Hoffman. __ MB.

Processed file: Dry file 3 through Line 6 DM4 on Tube Works Real Tube distortion pedal setting, into Fender Blues Jr., mostly using preamp dist, with slight power tube dist; Hot Plate as dummy load, solid state amp driving Blues Jr's speaker, probably mic'd with SM57 and CAD large-d condenser.� Processed by Michael Hoffman.

Processed file: ...

Misc Unrelated Notes

Crank all the Fender Blues Junior's controls with a bridge humbucker, then imagine controlling the eq -- instead of before ptubes (& mixer) -- between the power valves and speaker (& mixer).

Suppose eq'ing the mics just isn't getting the right sound.� Can use dummy load/ eq/ ss amp / g spk chain to instead adjust the eq just before the g spk.

EVH doesn't like cranked head directly into cab, because he then has no way to tune the eq at all, after preamp dist.� Probly too much sludgy dark lower mids and upper bass, and he doesn't like that, and it can't really be fixed at the mixer ch tone ctrls.

Don't just Crank all BJ ctrls w/ bridge hum, directly into iso cab; instead: bridge hum, BJ all ctrls max, hot plate as dummy load, mxr 10-band eq, vtronix ss power amp with flattest amp model selected, iso cab w/ speaker compression/distortion.� Do A/B alb comparison.

"tone quest" - define the idea.� show how reamp helps that goal.

statistic -- how well can people guess diff between (good) conventional miked tube amp sound vs. the many alternatives?� The good conventional miked tube amp sound is the std by which all sims are measured, for musicality.

spk breakin: push spk playing reamp loop all day.

-- Michael Hoffman, Amptone.com

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