Ugly Guitar Sounds via DI

[WeHuntKings]

I have an idea for a super noisy guitar led band by plugging the guitar directly into the board with a distortion pedal and feeding it into the house speakers. I know Nadja does this live. What should I be conscious of when doing this to make sound guys/gals happy and to get a consistent tone from venue to venue? I don't wanna blow any speakers.

[MechaGodzilla]

As long as the PA speakers are rated to handle the maximum output of the system (be it from a pa amp, powered mixer, or powered speakers) you're probably OK.

Brian Lee O'Malley (Scott Pilgrim guy) played with a guy who ran an acoustic with a DS1 straight to desk and he wrote that into the comic/film.

I think your main problem will be feedback so try a noise clamp or just stomp on a tuner pedal whenever you're not playing.

[WeHuntKings]

Honestly I was worried about not having enough feedback...hah! This is going to be an incredibly aggressive project I think. The noisier the better.

I guess most distortion sounds the same without an amp but are there some cool dirtboxes I should be aware of? I was thinking about picking up a boxidizer.

[manymanyhaha]

The Beatles' Revolution (the fuzz guitar version) was essentially this. Who was it that made a pedal that emulated the console saturation sound? I bought one and I can't believe I can't remember the name of that company. It's a guy in a band and one of his pedals does a fuzz vibrato thing. Picked a righteous fucking day to quit sniffing my bunghole.

If you don't have your own console, one problem you will inevitably run into is that sound guy who uses a digital console. Also, all analog consoles are not equal and some, or even many, will not distort in a manner that suits your purposes. Unless you will really enjoy the unpredictably factor, you should find some cheapie console that suits your tastes. I used to have doing this sort of thing with an old original Mackie 1604.

[Chankgeez]

Who was it that made a pedal that emulated the console saturation sound? I bought one and I can't believe I can't remember the name of that company. It's a guy in a band and one of his pedals does a fuzz vibrato thing.

You talking about the Demo Tape Fuzz?

[manymanyhaha]

Who was it that made a pedal that emulated the console saturation sound? I bought one and I can't believe I can't remember the name of that company. It's a guy in a band and one of his pedals does a fuzz vibrato thing.

You talking about the Demo Tape Fuzz?

Yes, I am! I remember that it did that sound pretty convincingly and sounded good.

[Mudfuzz]

you could also use a shitty pa as an amp and send a feed to the pa, that way you can control your feedback/sound and you have the silliness factor of running a pa into a pa

[ognoy]

It works for the Raveonettes.

[WeHuntKings]

The Beatles' Revolution (the fuzz guitar version) was essentially this. Who was it that made a pedal that emulated the console saturation sound? I bought one and I can't believe I can't remember the name of that company. It's a guy in a band and one of his pedals does a fuzz vibrato thing. Picked a righteous fucking day to quit sniffing my bunghole.

If you don't have your own console, one problem you will inevitably run into is that sound guy who uses a digital console. Also, all analog consoles are not equal and some, or even many, will not distort in a manner that suits your purposes. Unless you will really enjoy the unpredictably factor, you should find some cheapie console that suits your tastes. I used to have doing this sort of thing with an old original Mackie 1604.

I think a small cheap mixer is in my future. What do the harsh noise guys use?

[tremolo3]

It works for the Raveonettes.

I remember them using fender amps live though.

Nasty distortion pedal -> DI was my thing for a while, I made this shit that I need to record with real amps and mics soon...

https://soundcloud.com/morgen-32470107/sets/lo-fi-bm

[manymanyhaha]

I think a small cheap mixer is in my future. What do the harsh noise guys use?

I don't know but what you are ideally looking for is something that has a Trim knob pre-Fader so you can saturate the channel and then use the fader to adjust the volume of your saturated signal. Bonus is something that has Aux Sends so you could send the signal to an effect (or not) and then loop back into another channel. Scott Ayers from The Pain Teens used to cascade the four tracks of a 4-Track cassette portastudio in this manner and it sounded really good.

[ognoy]

It works for the Raveonettes.

I remember them using fender amps live though.

Yeah, they used to use Fender-amps live, but now it is just D.Is.

[tabcantab]

The Beatles' Revolution (the fuzz guitar version) was essentially this. Who was it that made a pedal that emulated the console saturation sound?

The JHS Colour Box/The Crayon was designed to get this exact tone...they even name-check "Revolution" in the description of it

[WeHuntKings]

I think a small cheap mixer is in my future. What do the harsh noise guys use?

I don't know but what you are ideally looking for is something that has a Trim knob pre-Fader so you can saturate the channel and then use the fader to adjust the volume of your saturated signal. Bonus is something that has Aux Sends so you could send the signal to an effect (or not) and then loop back into another channel. Scott Ayers from The Pain Teens used to cascade the four tracks of a 4-Track cassette portastudio in this manner and it sounded really good.

I actually have that same porta studio. Maybe I could plug this directly into a mixer and then into the DI box???

[friendship]

https://soundcloud.com/morgen-32470107/sets/lo-fi-bm