Is there any trick to recording good, natural guitar sounds?
The best way to get a natural guitar sound is to eliminate all pedals and find an amp that has a lot of range. With an AC30, for example, you can go clean, dirty, bright, or fat. It’s just the amplifier and the guitar — the most basic combination. I know the [Gibson] Trini Lopez and the Vox is going to have one sound, and the Telecaster and the Twin Reverb is going to have another. Getting basic guitar sounds should be that easy. As far as miking the amps, we used a Shure SM57. That’s usually the mic they use on the amps when you play live, so why not use it in the studio as well? Do you spend a lot of time dialing in guitar tones in the studio? For the most part, Adam and I didn’t spend more than ten minutes getting a sound. We’d just plug in and say, “Throw up a mic, and let’s do it!” Adam is so good and quick that he doesn’t need to do any measuring, calculating, or science — he can just hear it. But he has worked with producers who spend three days getting a rhythm guitar sound,
