avalon U5 for guitar as well as bass?

[justbass4]

I hear that avalon u5's are a safe bet; are they--as they claim to be--good with guitars too? I'm doing all di recording for the foreseeable future and I want to get a good sound. Does anybody know (yes I realize this is a bass forum but the u5 is considered to be a bass tool so...). Thanks.

[agreatheight]

They are good after a POD or other mic simulating box, but nothing is better than mic'ing an amp.

[Nick Kay]

The U5 is a bit warmer and more colourful than, say, a JDI going into a transparent mic pre. They perform admirably on acoustic guitar tracks, but don't expect stellar results on electric guitars. They won't sound BAD, per se, but as agreatheight said, it's hard to get a convincing, lively electric guitar tone out of something so clean and hi-fidelity.

If you're planning on re-amping or using an amp sim post-tracking, I'd go with a more transparent DI (Radial JDI, JDV, Countryman Type 85, whatever) into the cleanest, clearest mic preamp you have on hand. Do the colouration at the re-amp stage - you want straight up guitar tone at tracking.

[fretman4god]

acoustic guitars sound amazing through the U5. I've never ran the high level in off of an amplifier though. I would imagine it would still sound very good that way. I've never had a bad sound come out of one.

[Charling]

Agreed with Nick Kay, but you could still get good results using an avalon u5 for the guitars DI track. It has presets for guitar on the tone selector and could be used to get a good sound if you want to use an amp sim plugin or similar or you want to record something you could re-amp later on.

But the guitar amp is a huge part of the sound, and micing a cabinet is where you get the sound of an electric guitar to tape, a di track on its own is unlikely to do the job.

if you have some nice sounding pedals for overdrive etc you may find you get a useable sound for pop or some other super clean genre with just the di, ie for a genre where character and rich tone is not as important as a controlled and 'clean' sound. but for most genres you will just get a guitar that sounds lifeless and far to 'present' to sound good.