Your recording chain?

[Pete Martin]

Anyone care to share their recording chains? I am especially interested for non pedal players but am interested in pedal players as well!

If possible could you state in your answer if you play pedal or non pedal? Thanks!

[Paul Seager]

I only record at home, mostly sketching ideas or arrangements for my band-mates. I use a Zoom R8 "portastudio".

For acoustic instruments (dobro, acoustic guitar, upright bass) I use an SM57, straight to the R8. I'll add any effects post recording.

For electric instruments (lap-, console- or pedal-steel) I use the SM58 in front of the amp. Most effects will between guitar and amp.

I recently acquired a Tonemaster Twin Reverb which has a DI-out with speaker emulation and I think that will be my electric solution going forward.

Electric bass gets plugged directly into the R8.

To reiterate, I'm not making an album, just ideas so my preference is to get things done with minimal fuss!

[Slim Heilpern]

In my project studio, I have a very simple input chain as I do all effects, amp sim, etc... inside my DAW. I do it this way because I prefer to shape the sound at the mixing stage to best fit it into the mix. I might take a different approach if I didn't trust the audio engineer to make it sound good, but since I'm the audio engineer...

My recording chain:

Pedal Steel (Alumitone pickup) > Telonics VP > BBE DI > MOTU 8pre-ES > Cubase Pro DAW

As for pedal vs. non pedal, when I record my lap steel, I do it the same way.

I've been super happy with this setup, produces a super clean track that I can then play around with using a wide variety of plugins.

- Slim

[Pete Martin]

Thanks so much Paul and Slim.

Anyone else???

[John Macy]

My studio rig is into a Sarno V8 and line into the interface

My travel rig is a Furlong Sesh 400 line into the interface.

[Bob Hoffnar]

I experiment a lot. I generally don't use plug ins and prefer to get a sound I want and just record it.

For direct recording I use a Sarno Spectrum into either an old Telefunken 76/80 or Neve 1073 then maybe into a compressor(I am into my Verspyck/Hersch comp lately) that I have doing almost nothing.

I usually use a mic though. Milkman JG or Standel (reissue) into JBL D120 then the mic. My go to is a Neumann fet47 into the same signal chain as direct. When I record for other people in different studios I will go with whatever they want while micing my amp. That way I learn about different ways to do things. I am fussy about using a long instrument cable to get to the amp though. I basically refuse to let that happen. There are a few ways to deal with that problem.

I play an Emmons with stock single coil pickups or a Clinesmith console.