Gear Demo People! What are you using?

[Dowi]

The only time i tried to demo something was with phone and an Orange crush mini amp. Hardest thing to do was not to make the phone fall.

That being said, i agree with the most popular opinion here: don't need to be hifi, the most important thing is to understand how a pedal behaves. Everyone's signal chain is different, so, specially in case of dirt and comp pedals, you'll get how it really sounds with your setup only trying it first person.

[retinal orbita]

I think it’s also about balance - I personally have never really clicked with the Knobs aesthetic - it’s all a little too clean (they also don’t often demo anything I’m interested in fwiw) or something, but then you get a guy demoing a phaser and you feel like you’re in the basement of The Silence of the Lambs and there’s no talking or interaction - Pedals and Effects seem to have the perfect format where they actually look like they’re having fun with it - (pre Juan’s accident of course) and the balance of talking and playing is dependent on the pedal itself.

This is all just my opinion of course - but just a static shot of the pedal and no discussion is kind of.... let’s just say I don’t go back often. I guess what I’m saying is that it’s more important to really feel what you’re doing rather than a hi-fi aesthetic.....

[gila_crisis]

For the video I use a Panasonic LX7 fotocamera.
The audio is recorded directly (straight in line) with Audacity. For audio interface I use an old M-Audio Mbox2 Mini.
Then I put together audio and video in imovie.

That being said, i agree with the most popular opinion here: don't need to be hifi, the most important thing is to understand how a pedal behaves. Everyone's signal chain is different, so, specially in case of dirt and comp pedals, you'll get how it really sounds with your setup only trying it first person.

I also fully agree with this statement.

[Ghost Hip]

Anyone tried the Roland Go mixer? Seems like that would be a good option if you want to use your phone camera and have external audio that's automatically synced, as I understand it.

I used the Go Mixer when I had an android for these demos. My guitar went into my orange crush amp and headphone out to the go mixer. Synths/drums just went through the pedals into in the mixer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUn6404wNyc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN9eC2NS3e4

I used the shure iphone mic for this one, just set it up right in front of the amp with the mic facing the grill cloth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2FLx8ofX2o

After getting a four track and Fujifilm X-T2 I mostly record to tape and use the fuji for video. However I'm not really making demos anymore, and more performances. Recording to cassette is a fun process for me and allows me to do cool tape things to the recordings and play with them afterwards or release them as tracks in the future. Otherwise I could just plug into my interface and record to ableton.

[frodog]

Yeah, those demos sound excellent. Did they sync automatically, though? Is there a program included that does all that?

I have always recorded to 4-track, but it usually stays on tape. I have yet to set up an interface/DAW on my home PC, but we use ProTools and all that at the rehearsal space.

[Ghost Hip]

Yeah, those demos sound excellent. Did they sync automatically, though? Is there a program included that does all that?

I have always recorded to 4-track, but it usually stays on tape. I have yet to set up an interface/DAW on my home PC, but we use ProTools and all that at the rehearsal space.

Yeah they sync automatically and save the video to your phone. The roland go is kind of a pain in terms of logistics, because the interface and your cables are just dangling from your phone if you have it on any sort of tripod/stand. For the OP's purpose it'll be fine but if you want to make any choices a far as camera angle/look it's not very friendly.

The Shure mics for iphone are a lot easier if you can turn your amps up to a decent volume where you live. just set it up on a cheap tripod and let it rip. You can adjust the gain, compression, amd pickup area/pattern so it doesn't pick up your guitar picking.

[rickenbastard]

SM58
Behringer Xenyx USB mixer settings flat
Garage Band (I use the "natural vocal" setting. Makes it sound like you're standing in the room next to my amp)
Record video with my phone. Put all into movie maker and synch the audio to the video. Aesthetic of my demos is horrible but anyone who has experienced my setup in person will attest that my demos sound extremely accurate to being there just much much much quieter

[crochambeau]

I have been sorting my ability to make a video without resorting to grabbing a camera (with substandard audio) and them spending time trying to sync an audio track (that was recorded direct) and just eating a growing delay because of framerate drag.. etc.

I have settled upon connecting an old analog video camera to a TV capture card (any sort of video feed should work though, going modern is probably wise - image quality is not of critical importance to me) and feeding my audio to my A/D converter. These two separate sources are then mounted with OBS (Open Broadcast Software) https://obsproject.com/ to result in single pass video that I can either stream or chop up later in the edit suite of my choice.

My machine is linux, and getting it set up did involve some manual data entry. But so far, now that it's set up it remembers the settings and is proving a dream to use.

Hope that helps.

[cosmicevan]

Good topic. I've made a few tiny videos and just balanced my phone above what I was doing. I like the idea of capturing audio separate and then merging, but that sounds like some skills I don't have and for a computer, I essentially use just an iPad. I'd love to be able to make better videos and even capture some live improv performances. For those who marry audio and video after the fact, are you able to do all of that on an iPad or you need a computer? I can capture my audio in garage band easy and use my android phone for video capture.

[tremolo3]

Good topic. I've made a few tiny videos and just balanced my phone above what I was doing. I like the idea of capturing audio separate and then merging, but that sounds like some skills I don't have and for a computer, I essentially use just an iPad. I'd love to be able to make better videos and even capture some live improv performances. For those who marry audio and video after the fact, are you able to do all of that on an iPad or you need a computer? I can capture my audio in garage band easy and use my android phone for video capture.

You can just do that on any video editor that lets you import video/audio items separately and let you move items within the timeline. So basically, any video editor from 1995 to this date.
For ipad, I don't know any software, but Google says there is Adobe Premiere and Davinci Resolve versions for it (latter is free, and really good when it works).

For quick sync, the old "clap" trick works for me, but smarter people may have better suggestions.

[oscillofuzz]

Have never really done pedal demo's but I've done a couple guitar demo vids for the Aluminium Axes facebook group.
I've always used my Macbook's webcam for video (grainy video didn't matter to me), recording with Quicktime because it supports external audio interfaces as input source. Usually my setup was: aluminium guitar -> (optional dirt pedal ->) red stripe Peavey Bandit -> Sennheiser E906 or BF509 dangling in front of the speaker -> Universal Audio Arrow.
Currently I have this set up with an Electrovoice RE20 mic to record new riff ideas for my bands on my Travis Bean bass and I'm very very satisfied with the sound I get on the recordings.

If you have the budget, I would suggest getting a decent mic and using that in front of an amp instead of plugging in direct. I've tried recording the same bass direct and it was good enough, and with a lot of tweaking in plug ins could get it to sound quite good, but then I plugged the Bean into the $80 Peavey, put every knob in the middle between 2 and 3 on the dial, aimed the RE20 on the edge of the cone and the dustcap and when I recorded that I needed to do no further processing in the box for use on the rough song ideas we do now while in quarantine, just a bit of levelling to not drown out other stuff, the tone sits in the mix instantly.
If I had to record final album-quality tracks on this amp/mic combination because my big amps crapped out on me during the sessions or something, I bet no one would be underwhelmed by the resulting sound at all.

[doommeow]

what's the best option for hosting demos for those of us that hate social media / other people / the govment?

youtube and instagram seem to be the standard and i have little to no use for either. vimeo? soundcloud?

just looking for something that's private, integrates easily with ios, macos, and ilf. definitely not looking to go all influencer, but wouldn't mind sharing the occasional patch in the modular thread.