John Sykes Isolated Guitar Only - Still of the Night - Whitesnake

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RaceU4her said:
i dont know of any major label albums in the 80s with massive budgets being recorded in bootleg studios?? Bob Rocks little mountain was a massive studio, as was Rumbo, Sunset sound, One on One and all the others in LA alone. if the studio didnt have the gear, they would have just rented whatever they needed anyway.



im talking about the amount of "processing" being done, if he did play everything one take thats cool, but they still had to call bob rock in to work his magic to get the tones, and from watching him thats tons of mics, multiple amps, effects, eq and more eq... you always say clips dont matter because of all the processing, im just saying we cant act like there was no kind of processing going on here or any of the other big records
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No, I didn't say clips don't matter, I DO say that clips aren't the ONLY thing to go on, when it comes to assessing certain amps that you/me haven't tried. I do appreciate the work that you and others put in to making clips; but to judge an amp based on "but where are the good sounding clips??" is simply stupid. I'd rather ask guys here, that HAVE the amps themselves, their opinion on it before trying to judge an amp's tone on any crap or average sounding clip that doesn't even come close to defining what the amp really is, when you have it in the room.

I do understand that Bob Rock had anything/everything he needed to put into that record, effects/processing wise; but when you listen to the iso track, its very dry and basically straight in to his Marks.....splitting the signal with a simple stereo chorus pedal set very dry. Pretty open, and not much going on other than his straight in tone with tiny modulation.
 
Kapo_Polenton said:
If you check out Full In Bloom's channel on YT, he speaks with a lot of sound engineers and producers from the 80's. We aren't talking bob Rock on your first or second album for a lot of these guys. We are talking here is 50K - 100K as your advance and you need to cut an album in 1-2 months ready for print. I think you are confusing the big ticket names with the first few albums of a band where they have a good sized budget by today's standard, but that it really just got them a studio with isolated mixing room and an area they could play. They also would be charged ridiculous amounts to rent amps and other things so they'd blow through their cash quick. they could'nt all afford little mountain studio etc..

Also, the guys now, are recording in small to medium sized studios ( known or not) that have really really good gear. Yet to speed things up, all the work is being run through samples and plugins and other so that they don't impart any of the sound/room characteristics of the places they were recorded. I think that is what I am getting at. That's sad.

I'm also arguing from a processing stand point that most did not have Bob Rock. They had a bunch of guys just cutting their teeth or less well known turning knobs and working with what they had. They didn't have Bob Rock's EZ MIX Pack I and II or use CLA's suite of modelled plugins. They used a piece of shit Dolby comp ( which i think sounds great) on kick and dialed it in to their room and on their instruments and then used the EQ on their console because the studio they were in didn't have Pultecs.

There is no comparison. Everything is the same now because its all following the same sonic formula for the most part. At least to my ears.
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these major labels werent handing over hundreds of thousands to go to a bunk studio with unexperienced dudes using dbx stuff, look up any 80s metal album we love and adore and its from a world class studio who had in house teams of pro engineers on top of whoever else from the outside, even the early albums. regardless of the studio, just like today not every player in every band is cut out to record at a pro level and they had to edit everything the same way back then as they do now, just with analog gear, or they could Beau Hill it and have one of those in house guys rerecord the part :ROFLMAO: as for the "room" sounds, bob rock says in that documentary i posted that all the big LA studios had totally dead carpeted rooms which he didnt like, which means that big room reverb we think we are hearing is probably a spx90 or some eventide most of the time. My point is we cant blame editing for shitty sounds, they did just as much if not more of that back then.
 
JohnnyGtar said:
This is the shit right here. I knew it would be good, but fuck me runnin' this is amazng!

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Funny story... John's got apparently like 17 Jose modded marshalls.

Tried to buy an amp from a acquaintance/buddy of craigslist some years back. Had no idea who wanted his Friedman SS...

John Sykes shows up with THE black LP, plugs in, plays a bit and tried to lowball the everliving dogsnot out of him....
 
RaceU4her said:
these major labels werent handing over hundreds of thousands to go to a bunk studio with unexperienced dudes using dbx stuff, look up any 80s metal album we love and adore and its from a world class studio who had in house teams of pro engineers on top of whoever else from the outside, even the early albums. regardless of the studio, just like today not every player in every band is cut out to record at a pro level and they had to edit everything the same way back then as they do now, just with analog gear, or they could Beau Hill it and have one of those in house guys rerecord the part :ROFLMAO: as for the "room" sounds, bob rock says in that documentary i posted that all the big LA studios had totally dead carpeted rooms which he didnt like, which means that big room reverb we think we are hearing is probably a spx90 or some eventide most of the time. My point is we cant blame editing for shitty sounds, they did just as much if not more of that back then.
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Ok, let's flip it then.. what DO you blame then? Because there is no question that things now sound the same album to album.
 
Kapo_Polenton said:
Ok, let's flip it then.. what DO you blame then? Because there is no question that things now sound the same album to album.
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We could blame digital production, in the sense that it's normalizing everything. With full analog a 1/4" movement on the mic makes a noticeable difference and it's going to be near impossible to exactly recreate the sound from a session.
 
Kapo_Polenton said:
Ok, let's flip it then.. what DO you blame then? Because there is no question that things now sound the same album to album.
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the bands, labels or whoever is in charge that dont seem to want to move away from "that" sound for whatever reasons :dunno: i listen to a lot of jam and funk bands, in that scene most recordings sound totally natural and unique band to band, im sure they are recording into the same protools using the same plugins as every other genre though, so digital to me isnt the problem
 
Kapo_Polenton said:
Listen to these drums.. might be spliced but def in sections because I'd argue he's smearing a lot of his doubles and triplets. I am guessing the grid in Pro Tools or SD3 wouldn't be happy with the alignment on parts of this one. In the mix though? Brilliant, who cares! It sounds like a human and has a snare that stings you like a wasp.

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Definitely splicing going on. We were recording at Enterprise in Hollywood shortly after that came out and the engineers were commenting on how Lars could not play the faster songs the whole way through in a recording ready fashion.
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i found this quote from butch vig interesting..



Just wondering…how much do you still track analog? On the last Green Day album I read you guys did drums and bass to tape. Do you still do all-analog projects? And do you ever mix to tape? - JQ127​


Butch Vig: I don't use that much analog tape any more. For Green Day, we tracked to both Pro Tools and tape, but after a listening session, EVERYONE (myself, band, Chris Dugan the engineer, assistant engineers) agreed the Pro Tools sounded better. I think we used tape on a few tracks (Chris probably commented already on GS)...but I think the reason we chose Pro Tools is that we had a great analog chain going in, with the mics, preamps, and eq, and we didn't need another element to vibe the sound up.

If you had been there to A/B with us, you could hear what I'm talking about....the tracks sounded GREAT coming up on the console...and when played back on Pro Tools, they sounded EXACTLY the same. When we listened to the tape, I was missing transients, and thought the bottom sounded mushy, and the top end sounded weird.


and heres one about Nirvana, even the best drummer playing the best drums in the studio regarded for its amazing drum sounds still has samples on it


Butch Vig: The best way to get the drum sound on Nevermind is....get Dave Grohl to play drums at Sound City!!!

The snare was called "The Terminator"...it was 80's Bell Brass. His kit was an 80's Tama Grandstar.

Andy Wallace added a bit of his custom samples as ambience, they get a bit of the "gunshot" effect, but the samples were mixed pretty low...
 
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GJgo said:
We could blame digital production, in the sense that it's normalizing everything. With full analog a 1/4" movement on the mic makes a noticeable difference and it's going to be near impossible to exactly recreate the sound from a session.
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Definitely, that goes a long with my session to session things were always diff. Anyway, let's just call it what it is.. new music sucks and is formulaeic and safe.
RaceU4her said:
i found this quote from butch vig interesting..



Just wondering…how much do you still track analog? On the last Green Day album I read you guys did drums and bass to tape. Do you still do all-analog projects? And do you ever mix to tape? - JQ127​


Butch Vig: I don't use that much analog tape any more. For Green Day, we tracked to both Pro Tools and tape, but after a listening session, EVERYONE (myself, band, Chris Dugan the engineer, assistant engineers) agreed the Pro Tools sounded better. I think we used tape on a few tracks (Chris probably commented already on GS)...but I think the reason we chose Pro Tools is that we had a great analog chain going in, with the mics, preamps, and eq, and we didn't need another element to vibe the sound up.

If you had been there to A/B with us, you could hear what I'm talking about....the tracks sounded GREAT coming up on the console...and when played back on Pro Tools, they sounded EXACTLY the same. When we listened to the tape, I was missing transients, and thought the bottom sounded mushy, and the top end sounded weird.


and heres one about Nirvana, even the best drummer playing the best drums in the studio regarded for its amazing drum sounds still has samples on it


Butch Vig: The best way to get the drum sound on Nevermind is....get Dave Grohl to play drums at Sound City!!!

The snare was called "The Terminator"...it was 80's Bell Brass. His kit was an 80's Tama Grandstar.

Andy Wallace added a bit of his custom samples as ambience, they get a bit of the "gunshot" effect, but the samples were mixed pretty low...
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I'm not arguing that tape is better..( not that you said that, just for sake of discussion) in fact, a lot of people have said that it would lose a lot of the high end and they had to add it back in. Using a DAW to record and mix is not the problem, it is using advanced features like time align and snap to grid or moving individual hits around etc. There is already a lot of roll off in the highs with analog gear, I think the daw keeps those in there and it is amazing to be able to make multiple copies of work.

That's more of a digital vs analog discussion, I think I'm more thinking of the abuse of digital technology and the lack of effort because everything is fixed in post.
 
Kapo_Polenton said:
Definitely, that goes a long with my session to session things were always diff. Anyway, let's just call it what it is.. new music sucks and is formulaeic and safe.

I'm not arguing that tape is better..( not that you said that, just for sake of discussion) in fact, a lot of people have said that it would lose a lot of the high end and they had to add it back in. Using a DAW to record and mix is not the problem, it is using advanced features like time align and snap to grid or moving individual hits around etc. There is already a lot of roll off in the highs with analog gear, I think the daw keeps those in there and it is amazing to be able to make multiple copies of work.

That's more of a digital vs analog discussion, I think I'm more thinking of the abuse of digital technology and the lack of effort because everything is fixed in post.
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im on your side with all this, I have an unhealthy obsession with my music being live, everything I record is one take and I’ve never gridded or added a sample to my drums. My point is just that while it’s easier to do now, guys have been editing and sampling for 40+ years now. Like you said, rock just got formulaic, safe and boring, that’s why I listen to more jam and funk bands now.
 
We just finished an album and I'm curious where it lands on the formularic & boring vs. spontaneous & cool spectrum. The guitar signal chain is all analog. The bass is a DI, but my engineer said reamping the bass is kind of a waste of time. The drums to have a lot of editing & sampling added (mostly on the kick) however the drum kit itself does have great pieces that sound killer. So, it's kind of a mix of sins.
 
For anyone who cares, I had always heard that Sykes was using the Mesa preamps but Dave talks about the Jose Marshall here at the 44min mark.



Modded Marshall for the win again!
 
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