Guitar player in the control room solutions

GroupDIY Audio Forum

Help Support GroupDIY Audio Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

dp

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 30, 2019
Messages
56
So, if the guitar player wants to be in the control room with their pedalboard  and the amp needs to be in another room, say 50 or more feet away, I know you can buy something like this... https://www.radialeng.com/product/sgi

But, is that really needed or can I just do the pedalboard into a DI box and run an XLR cable into the other room and then into a reamp-box then into the amp?

If that's not possible, I'd be very interested in any info someone may have on a DIY solution.

Thanks,
Darren
 
If you can put the amp head in the control room,  do that and run a long heavy gauge speaker cord.

The DI box / reamp would work too,  just make sure it is an active DI with low impedance output.
 
Thanks. It would be a fun project to figure out how to build something Ike the Radial solution. Isn't it just some sort of active DI on one end and transformer/amp on the other?

THere is another off-the-shelf solution out there... name escapes me at the moment... that is a little simpler in it's implementation than the Radial too.
 
All of those cabling and impedance/level solutions will work as well as you are willing to pay for them, but one thing that will change the equation is that in a high gain situation with the guitar away from the speakers, the resonance and self-feedback tendencies will be lower when the guitar is isolated from its speaker.

One way around that is that the studio monitors can serve as surrogates for the guitar speaker, providing acoustic feedback to the strings, but then there is also the possibility of crosstalk from the other elements in the studio monitors entering the guitar signal through microphonic pickups or simply through the resonant strings.

At any rate, I don't think the problem is so much getting a signal from a guitar in a control room to a guitar amp  in a separate iso room, but dealing with the problem that a high gain guitar - amp combo plays differently when the speakers don't influence the strings. A tremolo bar feedback solo will clearly be out of the question if there's no amp to cause the necessary feedback to the guitar strings.
 
You are absolutely correct Monte. What I'm dealing with right now on the current project I'm recording for my band is the other guitar player absolutely HATES playing with headphones. I'm totally fine with them. I would describe it as low-ish to mid-gain, nothing approaching the high-gain realm. His amp is a JTM clone combo too so the head-in-the-control-room idea is not a solution for him.

I suppose I could also just break down and finally buy something with great off-axis rejection, like an RE-20, and just stick him in the other room with a floor wedge and his amp. I've been wanting one of those for a long time anyways. I think it would be a great match for my baritone voice and I want to branch out and do more voice-over work.approaching

 
We had a situation where our studio was used for a lot of jingles, fast turn around.

We ended up using a wireless system, with the amp in the main room. Was the easiest and quickest route in our situation.
 
peterc said:
We had a situation where our studio was used for a lot of jingles, fast turn around.

We ended up using a wireless system, with the amp in the main room. Was the easiest and quickest route in our situation.

I've considered that as well. We both have the nice Shure digital system for our live setups. We could just put the transmitter at the end of the pedalboard and connect the receiver directly to the  amp.

I'll experiment with that. Perhaps my DIY itch I'm going through right now will have to get scratched by something else.  ;D
 
dp said:
I've considered that as well. We both have the nice Shure digital system for our live setups. We could just put the transmitter at the end of the pedalboard and connect the receiver directly to the  amp.
I know nothing of studios but I would think having radio transmitters around potentially sensitive high gain / high impedance analog gear would be a bad idea.
 
squarewave said:
I know nothing of studios but I would think having radio transmitters around potentially sensitive high gain / high impedance analog gear would be a bad idea.

I've used our Shure systems many times within the control room alone with zero issues. Of course, YMMV.
 
If you can put the amp head in the control room,  do that and run a long heavy gauge speaker cord.!

that's what e valentine and slash did!!
and most do for over dubs..
 
Amp in control room!  That is crazy but understandable for sustain.      So now you have 100w in studio parting the Red Sea.  50w combo in control room cranked.  A pair of Augspurger monitors cranked in search of gold for feeding a streaming internet service.  Enjoy it while you can.  Hearing  aids are coming your way sooner than later.
 
Yeah I don't even like running my 20-watters in the control room, so mostly I just use a Suhr reactive load and IR's. But I only have one... and the other guitar player is kinda set in his ways and hates using headphones if you know what I mean.
 
We had multiple amp heads shelved in the control room at the studio I worked in. They would connect to a patchbay that allowed us to connect them to 6 various cabs in the live room. From the patchbay we used heavy gauge cables to the cabs. I suppose the furthest cab could reach 40 feet away but the closest one was on the other side of the wall so 3 feet away.  We just kept the live room with the cabs close to the control room and had a plate with 6 1/4 inch jacks in the wall that you plugged the cab too. We recorded everything from jingles to death metal.
 
When we did the harmony hut for Vai we did the following...

1. he loves to be in the control room with guitar in hand but amps live in the  live room when recording.
2. more often then not any FX pedals or whatever is in the control room with him.

We ran BNC cable between two patch panels  that had 1/4" jacks on them.  it did us well and  there was minimal signal degradation. You are talking a run of maybe a max of 50 feet. between the panels and whatever else we have after the panels.  We have never noticed signal degradation in all the time it's been in use but with a run of unbalanced that far, I assume there is a little some happening.
 
Thanks for all the info people. It's been helpful.

I still would be interested in a DIY solution like the Radial setup if anyone wants to chime-in.
 
dp said:
But, is that really needed or can I just do the pedalboard into a DI box and run an XLR cable into the other room and then into a reamp-box then into the amp?

Wrong, please understand signals

DI Box
Converts Instrument Signal to Microphone Signal

REAMP BOX
Converts Line Level Signal to Instrument Signal


_____________________________________________________________________________

In the Radial system,
the input box converts instrument signal to balanced line level with a circuit Buffer  (not the same as a DI box)

the output box is the same as a reamp



 
A DI doesn't need to drop the level.  Some do,  but mostly because when using a transformer you need a step down to get a high enough input Z.

For transparency I much prefer an active DI that keeps signal level unchanged.

The purpose of a DI has more to do with impedance than it does with level.
 
dp said:
I still would be interested in a DIY solution like the Radial setup if anyone wants to chime-in.

A simple solution would be

1/4" in -> Unity gain FET opamp buffer -> Line Driver (for example THAT1646 -> XLR out

At the other end

XLR in -> Line Receiver (for example THAT1246) -> 1/4" out
 
john12ax7 said:
A simple solution would be

1/4" in -> Unity gain FET opamp buffer -> Line Driver (for example THAT1646 -> XLR out

At the other end

XLR in -> Line Receiver (for example THAT1246) -> 1/4" out

Awesome! Thank you! I already have a reamping box (two channel even) so that half is covered. The input side sounds easy enough.
 
Back
Top