So the time finally came for us to enter the studio.
Some of you may have seen our post on my qualms on our studio choice. In brief: We got a hell of a deal recording a 7 song EP for $750, including mastering. I want to get it mastered elsewhere, but we don't have vocals or the extra money, and the price includes mastering. So we are going to get 7 instrumentals finished, and then after deciding on a vocalist and writing lyrics for the few that do not have them, we are going to re-mix and re-master the 7 songs and possibly record a few more and call it an LP (our songs average 4-7 minutes).
The BBE Bmax-T has a DI with a Jensen Transformer. I was under the impression the Jenson added to the overall cost of the Bmax-T (compared to the cheaper solid-state version w/o the Jensen) and added to the performance of the DI out as well. I also though that the Jensen Transformer was put in there to make the DI extra clean. As of today, I can tell you that Jensen Transformer on the DI is useless [for recording] because the DI too noisy to record direct with. The EQ was flat and the Compressor and Sonic Maximizer was off. I went direct because we tracked live and there was only one isolation room. I ended up using a Sansamp RBI instead. It sure made me wish I hadn't sold my RBI for drug money! (sober over 6 months now
).
The other problem I ran into, was the high-impedence inputs on both the Sansamp PSA-1 (SVT setting) and the Sansamp RBI, which caused my active bass to distort when plucking hard (yes,I changed my battery), even with the -20db pad pushed in on the RBI. Now I know why recording engineers hate active basses and why most session players don't use them. We ended up getting a usable tone with the drive all the way down on the RBI.
The BBE however, did not distort since it has a true active input (guessing), but like I said earlier, was too noisy to record direct with. I was bummed...
is there anyway the 5751 in place of the 12AX7 could have caused this extra noise? I'm thinking not. I plan on calling BBE and talking to them about this, as I was under the impression that many use/have used this preamp for recording.
Other than that recording went awesome. We tracked 5 songs live, the rest one instrument at a time. I love our drummer so much, he hit a 5-minute song (just drums) in one take.
I've been planning on buying a passive J-bass type for a while now, this gives me even more of an incentive. I like to hear some thoughts on noisy DI on supposedly high-end preamps as well as opinions on recording direct with active basses?
Edit: Sorry for the novel! You guys know how it is when you haven't posted in a while...
