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by wiggins_Archive
Man, I do this junk all the time, with less to work with. I hate recording with headphones, and wouldn't want to put anyone else through that kind of misery.
Hired Geek's setup suggestion is good - but you might get a lot of guitars in the OH's unless your gobohs are like, 8 feet tall. Which defeats the purpose of having the guitars together in the first place.
I like to put goboh's around the drums instead of the guitars. Try to keep the bass cab as far from the drums as you can, as long as the drummer can still hear/see the guy. If possible, try to keep it quiet. That's your biggest bleed problem, for sure - omnipresent, omniscient bass frequencies.
I like to set up the guitars with the backs of the cabinets together, facing towards opposite walls, perpendicular to the drummer's line of sight. I record bands that rely on their feedback a good bit, and this gives the guitarists full access to their cabinets.
For vocals, okay, I've never done this, but I've seen/heard it done. Condensers are a bad idea. Let the dude get up on a good dynamic - the ones I've seen most often in my limited experience are 421's, 441's, RE20's, SM-7's. Unless the band uses pop filters live, I would discourage their use as well. Set up another, perhaps crappier mic as close to the good one as possible and run it through a pa so everyone can hear it.
Basically, check out how the band practices, and modify it as little as possible to please the purposes of recording, without making the band uncomfortable with the sound/feeling. If they close enough to their practice setup, they'll get a much better recording than if they're unfamiliar with click tracks, isolation, and headphones.
You might want a mono room mic to make everything "gel", and you certainly sound like you have the equipment/tracks for it (i don't, usually) - but I think you'll find that recording this way gives you a perspective - lets you hear whats really important, and makes your recordings simpler, more efficient, and easier to mix.
Hope none of that's redundant, I'm on my 3rd espresso machiatto of the past 2 hours, and I haven't had caffiene in days, so I "speed read" the earlier posts.
Oh, and PM me if you want to hear some stuff I've done in this manner. In a 2 car garage with a tascam 388, and no mics that cost over $150.
