Recording Mandolin With Other Instruments Incl PSG

[Greg Cutshaw]

A friend gave me a $50 Rogue mandolin to do some fret work on. It has no truss rod but with some nut and bridge work it's quite playable though low in volume. For $50 it's a great way to add some variety to recordings with steel guitar. It makes a great rhythm track instrument in place of a capo'd up guitar to boot.

I used a Shure SM-57 to capture the mandolin and dobro, both about 2" away from the 12th fret and behind the bridge respectively. The bass was direct to console and all was fed through a low cost but low noise tube pre-amp into a Zoom R24. Final mixdown was in Reaper.


Hear It!


Greg

[Robert Tripp]

Dats some good playin' Greg......

Very nice..

Rob

[jolynyk]

Greg link won't open for me

[Greg Cutshaw]

Just tried the link and it's definitely working!

This cheap mandolin has no truss rod and a not so straight neck and a plywood top. Despite all that it plays well and is a great way to go if your not a hardcore bluegrass player. I cut the nut string notches down to put all the strings .008" above the first fret on average, and re-cut the bridge top to put the E string at .040" and the G string at .055" at the 12th fret. Not nearly the volume of my Gibson L series but it's 1/40th the price too!

Thanks for the comments Rob!


Greg

[Rick Schacter]

all was fed through a low cost but low noise tube pre-amp into a Zoom R24.

Greg

What type of pre-amp (brand and model) did you use?


Rick

[Greg Cutshaw]

Rick,

Here's the info on the preamp I use:

Studio Projects preamp!


I am sure there are lots of great preamps out there. This one for the price point and when used with my Shure SM-57 and a few other cheaper mics just has no audible white noise even with high gain settings. With this preamp I don't have to crank the amps way up or get right on top of the mics to get a good signal to noise ratio. The tube section, while providing a bit of grit, does not however produce any kind of authentic tube amp sound. With the SM-57 fed directly into the Zoom R24, the hiss is so high it renders the R24 almost unusable.

On another note, I did have a Gibson A5-L and a high end Rigel mandolin for a while. I've got the Rogue fingering as well as those and in the mix I'm not sure the Gibson (over $3k now) is that much better. The Rogue does not have that woody tone as much and lacks in volume compared to the high end instruments.

I also have a few of "The Loar" mandolins. The F style is OK but does not finger as well as the Rogue nor is it that loud. The A style Loar has great action and is very loud with a tone to easily match the A5-L or the Rigel for a lot less money.


Greg

[Greg Cutshaw]

Guess I should also mention that this starved plate tube preamp does a great job with a bass guitar plugged direct into it. The preamp sections are all discrete designs with an extremely low noise floor. The bass you hear on the recording is without any additional EQ or compression in Reaper.


G

[Rick Schacter]

Thanks, Greg.

I have a Rover F style mandolin that I might like to try this pre-amp out on.

I use a Zoom R-16 to record, then I import the tracks into my laptop to clean them up and mix with Sonar X2.

My Rover was a tuning nightmare when I first got it. But it plays great now after getting it set up properly.

A whole lot of fun for not too much money.

A friend of mine uses Reaper and really likes it.
He's planning to send me some tracks to work with.
Do you know if it's possible to swap tracks back and forth between Reaper and Sonar?



Rick

[Greg Cutshaw]

You can swap tracks as either wav or mp3 files. It's nice to have them synced to a common drum or click track for east synching. All this new recording software is amazing for its ease of use and home brew results.


Our recording process is similar:

http://www.gregcutshaw.com/Zoom%20R24%2 ... tudio.html

[Rick Schacter]

Maybe I'll download Reaper and give it a try.
It'll probably make things easier to transfer tracks back and forth.

Thanks, Greg.

Rick