BoSoxBiker

Welcome to the forum! Just remembered this gem. It's all about dual purpose and hiding treatments. https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/studio-sos-motorhome-studio Ironically, reverb is the one thing that was an absolute disaster with a bad room. My "Thank You' cover notwithstanding, some of the digital reverbs and room emulations do a really nice job. They still need pristine signals to sound like pristine signals. aka a real room.

This is just a somewhat off-topic note to Gibson more than anything, though it does aid in underscoring the somewhat confusing times a guitar purchaser has these days. The OP's topic of Price being a big part of that. So, I'm a Gibson customer. I've bought 2 nice acoustics and an LP within the past 5 years. I have 2 non-Gibsons within the past 5 years, too. A Dove and a 335 will be mine before it's all over, and my all-purpose take anywhere $1k(ish) solid-wood guitar might end up being a Gibson, too. I'm a member of this forum, and I subscribe to whatever newsletter is on the site. I did not know about an "Original" collection until this thread. I looked back at my Gibson emails. Not a mention. I clicked on a couple of the links, including the NAMM recap and related materials. Not one word. On to the links at the top of the forum page. The "Originals" page lists 11 guitars, but nothing at all about what the concept of the Original line-up is. Each description I looked at has a little blurb about the guitar itself - yay for new Doves!!! - but nothing telling me anything about the originals concept except for deducing that the guitar has been around a while and represents long tradition and Bob's your uncle. cool! I figured it out. So let's see what's on the Modern collection. J-45 standard is the 4th guitar listed. I am missing something, which should never be a surprise. It's not a habit for me. It's an MO. It's what I do. I miss things, and I admit that. So a good 30 minutes of looking and I see nothing. I did not google "what is the original collection by Gibson?". Perhaps my first mistake. doesn't matter, really, because something like this and pricing should be very clear. I know something about guitars and it is not clear. Imagine the masses who are not into this as an obsession? Who could blame a non-enthusiast for going with brand-x. In other words, to Gibson, please don't make it hard to be a Gibson customer. It's challenging enough to come up with the scratch to join the club to begin with.

I can dig it! I have an evil record button, too. I also have a someone hears you singing filter. The Ramone reference was from a world class rant following an Eagles song I bashed out in record time. Something about the last living Ramone calling and asking me to slow down so that the rest of the band can rest in peace. I'm paraphrasing, and I did mean no disrespect to the Ramones. and don't even know if where is one left. I covered that up at the end of the rant by suggesting that in all fairness that I might have been mistaken that that perhaps it was Howard Stern. But then again, I added, why would he be worried about the Ramones? I do tend to get over myself in quick fashion with a good rant. Wish I could have had one last night. I'm looking forward to hearing your cover, btw.

BK, Baggs has an AmericanaFest series via Newsletter from when I registered something online with them. Almost always inspiring, though I will sometimes let them sit in my inbox for months at a time before binge watching. Good stuff and thanks for posting.

It's BK Ramone! 🙂 Sadly enough, I did that to one of my own songs this week and my wife picked up on it. Good times. 😀

BK, you done pretty good to fit that song into your style and made it your own. Always admirable. The question of lyrics and hearing the words clearly seemed to me to be only a question of speed and fitment. I'd never heard it before, but I found the version by Cold Chisel. Their first verse alone was 22 seconds long, and yours was 15 seconds. Someone put speed in your beer? 😁

OK, so I did another one. I got the urge after some more mic experiments. This one is a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Thank You", done ala Chris Cornell (RIP) with his solo guitar effort. I did one three weeks ago right after I had gotten the room together, but before adding reflection, and then another a week later. Both stunk far worse than this one. This one's sound is in the neighborhood of what I've wanted for a long time with this song. I did add some original Led Zep flavor with some heavy Reverb. The SJ-200 provides quite a nice sound for these antics. I need to get the 'bird up there soon. Edit: Yeah, the irony thing just occurred to me. I do all this work to clear up the sound in my studio and then turn around and try to make it sound like it a big gymnasium and push the mid range to it's limits. my only defense is that, um, I got nothing. Sudden onset advanced age adolescence? 😊

Thanks, Billroy. I am having too much fun with this room.

Hokey Dokey, the samples went over like a lead balloon. No biggie, of course. Were they even playable? I was going to ask if the differences were too subtle. That notwithstanding, I've been in discovery mode this week. The biggest discovery I've made is that I need to re-learn how to track. Everything. And mix. Everything. There is no quick way to describe what I had to do to get even a semi-usable signal into my DAW. A sane person would have given up. I probably should have. I didn't, and am glad I stuck with it. Just imagine the classic advice of getting as much signal through the microphone as the exact opposite of what I had to do to come anywhere close to a clear signal. Just awful. Tracking like I was supposed to track meant all that comb filtering squelchy sibilance was perceived by the mic as the proper signal, and any AD converter I ever tried could not handle it and made it distort even worse. OK, so back to discovery. Monday, before learning I could get even higher, I had a pair of Rodes MP5s a foot in front of the closet trap, aimed at my SJ-200's neck and bridge. The last recording of the day, and I was bored and felt like singing part of a song. So I did. This was by far, the best I have ever done singing and playing into a mic(mics) at the same time. The song is a CCR deep track(maybe?) called "Long as I can See The Light" as performed by Ted Hawkins on the album called "The Next 100 Years". (find this song on that album on your favorite streaming platform for a real soulful, rootsy treat.) I don't play this style guitar much, and it shows. I also do not sing well, and that style is WAYYYYY out of reach. I had also not rehearsed it, though I do play it once a week or so. I added some studio effects in my DAW. Compression, EQ, Reverb and a teensy bit of echo. I did, just because I could, add 2db at 800Hz or so, and did nip the bottom end a bit in the DAW. I also gave it a small, but wide boost at 3kHz. It did not need it, BUT, I have never, ever been able to do this on anything I ever tracked in this room before. So I made it a bit bright. Remember, this is crude and I don't do this style well at all. <gulp> Oh yeah, and I forgot the words and kludged together a couple verses while playing and singing this 1/2 song recording. Full of mistakes, breathing, etc. It's looking up and in the right direction, at least? I'm used to hiding behind full productions. LOL

Absolutely outstanding! Bravo!

Nice, yet again, Sal! Many kudos. Tough one to sing, too, I imagine.

Cool! I don't know the market on these types of makes, but the prices didn't seem that awful on his site.

Up first is a sample of what a few pieces of pegboard and plastic does to the sound when recording acoustic guitar. This was done two weeks ago. I played my SJ strung with the D'Add Nickel Wounds using a Gibson Heavy pic. I played a short passage using a moderately heavy strum. The goal was discovery and learning, not to impress myself with smooth sound. There are six iterations of the same passage, which I played in the same spot as my wife placed various components around following a script. This is zero EQ, compression or any effects at all. Not even low freq roll off. I chose the basic Rodes NT 1 mic over the Myrtle because it has a much flatter below 200Hz relative to distance, making it more consistent for testing. Also, there is no big dip at 3.2kHz like the Myrtle has. If there's an issue, I want to hear it. For the testing, the mic was placed about a foot from the closet facing front, and about 3 feet from the right wall. Mic 2-4 inches above the guitar neck and body joint, 2 inches to the left of the joint and about 20 inches away from the guitar. Guitar was slightly facing right at a specific spot for consistency. Note: I did not cover it earlier, but I built the two rearmost sidewall gobos with pegboard on the back instead of both sides insulation like the rest. This was done to make them reversable. Also note that the closet-trap has it's top 2-feet covered with pegboard. This is done 4-inches behind the fabric. The mic is getting reflections back from this on every test. Below are the timestamps and the items tested. Each test was built upon the one before it unless otherwise noted. In other words, if I put a piece of plastic up somewhere, assume it stayed there until otherwise noted. Also note that the results are very subtle from one test to the next. I am testing different scenarios of the same sort of thing - reflections. Remember, this was all quick, semi-firm strums using a heavy-ish plectrum. This is also trimmed down from about 12-14 longer test segments done all at once, trimmed down to 8 smaller segments for ease of detecting differences. 0:02 - Standard position with the rear-most side gobos turned with the pegboard side facing towards the room for basic reflections. 0:18 - Added 24" x 48" sheet of VERY thin plywood to floor between me and the mic-stand. 0:34 - replaced plywood with pegboard - same size and thickness. 0:50 - Replaced pegboard with Bamboo Floor Matt - about 30" x 54" - 1:06 - Replaced bamboo with pegboard, added a 24" x 60" piece of plastic draped over the rear wall gobo and the two side-wall rearmost gobos. The latter meant the plastic went over the pegboard built into the two side gobos. 1:24 - Added an additional piece 24" x 48" sheet of pegboard - this time standing longways on floor behind the mic. 1:42 - Added a similar piece of plastic to the front of the pegboard added in previous step. near the 2:00 mark - Turned the rear most sidewall gobos so that the pegboard was facing away from the room, and draped the plastic over the side now facing the room. I call this the "softwode out" as opposed to the "pegboard side out". Some basic analysis I came up with. Feel free to read or not read before listening for yourself. Each piece of plastic that went up added something to the end result, but sounded off until the 3rd piece was added. It got better, too, with the piece placed on rear-wall pegboard. I used plywood several times in testing. Each time it was used, the mids starting at 1kHz got a bit duller. Another way to put it is that it got less noisy. Time will tell. Test #2 showed this the best, which is why I included it. The bamboo had a finished surface, which I think is the cause for it to sound a bit brighter. Test #5 showed me a teensy bit brighter, but the 850Hz was much clearer and with a definitive mid-range growl. Test #6 showed me a little bit more direct sounding 1kHz - 2kHz response. Test #8 seemed like it was a bit more subdued than the rest. I might have even thought it to be thick at one point. Lastly, this is the same file as before, except I was abusing it with many plugins, experimenting with EQ, compressors, sound FX and reverbs. While I heard the boomy parts in the studio, I did NOT hear the depth of these parts. Not until I got out of the room and had some fresh ears with different, non-studio headphones. I corrected the issue that next morning with pegboard, which is something I would call nothing but pure luck. Simply put, It's where it felt empty to me. I showed my wife after the fix what I missed and she was quite shocked that anyone could ever miss it. Anyhow, the awfulness....... I have no idea if these differences are audible on builtin device speakers. I hope you can hear the differences.

Thanks, Sal! I am not good at that stuff at all. More like a perfect storm of stubborness and frustration. I prefer to call it persistence, but whatever works. LOL That sounds like a horrid ordeal. I had my own issues with a crooked, lieing scum of the Earth contractor. I was actually going to have him build these, but I caught him being unethical on two big things at one time. I was MERCILESS in the two weeks of shaming that ensued. It was brutal. I am not a cruel guy, but I can be. To answer your question, I have not played the resonator since starting this project. It was un-useable before putting up the studio foam this past April. That tamed it some, but it was still boomy and screechy sounding. My wife got me a lap steel as a partial solution last year until I was ready to properly attack the room. I've been playing the resonators outside almost exclusively just because of the house acoustics. I'm looking forward to hear what it can be. So, I don't know if you ever caught any of the American late 60's Spaghetti Westerns and the like. The sound effects to sell that something was loud was to spike the meters. Like a guy yelling or a gun shot in close quarters echoing with a gawd-awful racket. That sound and my sound shared some similarities. Another one was the Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene where an animated God appeared from the heavens with a big, echo-laden thunderous voice. My vocals were like that, even with treating on the way in and after.

Thanks! I appreciate that. And yes, I actually made it a point to play every single day during the project. Early on, I thought about the irony of getting the room done with lost callousses. LOL That explanation makes total sense to me. I did find the whole experience to be fascinating on many levels, including the planning and then subsequent adjustments. One quick example. There was a definite low hum/rumble at the front wall The picture of that one soffit trap set on the bottom right corner reduced it so that I could not hear it. I brought it in and out of the room many times just to be sure. The one type of trap that delayed the start of the project was researching something called a VPR trap. Big results if it works, but moderate success rate and HUGE expense due to the special foam used and being hard to source. Sounds like something similar, perhaps, to the marine material.

Thanks, Billroy. It'll take some time to find a good "before" track that wasn't shaped on the way in, and that has decent notes on mic type and placement, pic, guitar used, etc, etc. I do have a before and after vocal take using the test gobos that told me to go forward with this project. I'll post a couple things later today or tomorrow, though. One is a semi-subtle variances on different reflective material in various places for using the room to track acoustic guitar. Another showing something I missed when bouncing a test track due to flat center image.

Oh, wow! I always imagined your music room was somewhat bigger due to your recordings. Interesting, too, is that small, square rooms are supposed to be tough rooms to control, acoustically speaking. You're the second person I've had mention to me a room of that type that does well recording. Far better than my room.Perhaps some day I will learn what it is about this house that sounds so boomy. Everything. Dogs barking, talking, TV, speakers, etc, etc. It's like a giant reverb chamber. As a Migraineuer, it can be murder. I have two main spots I play guitar, but it doesn't really matter. It's going to be heard in the house. My normal spot to play guitar is in a sort of a formal living room. It's right behind the Hummingbird in the pic below. The storage pic shows the semi-open floor plan. Sound travels. If she's not at work, she is almost certainly sitting directly across the room from me on a loveseat with her back to loud 2-story foyer. It's a flutter chamber. Sometimes she'll hang in the studio with me and a little portable beading station to make jewelry. I almost never play acoustic in the studio with her in there, though. It's too much. she's polite about it, but I don't want to run her off either, so I'll play electric at lower, more reasonable volumes. Mostly, it's right here on the couch without the opposite wall to bounce a massive reflection back at me. Your friend's (RIP) obsession with the smallest of noises is quite common, from what I understand. While I've seen professional tutorials over the years where the presenter will make sure everything is as clean as can be, I've seen far more presenters simply reduce the offending bit. Personally, I like that approach and use it as first choice if the track is a keeper. Where I lose lost time is taming unwanted distorted resonances turned into sibilances. The short version is that all that resonance that bounced around the walls without dieing became comb filtering (or various levels of phase cancellation) which replaced of the tone I spent vast amount of money on. (SJ, HB, 614,D41) I tried to turn that crud into music. Now I have glorious tone, and after the most recent reflections, I have depth and tone coming out of my monitors. All that becomes an expensive guessing game when tone is replaced by pitched noises. Here's the common playing spot. I will play outside sometimes, but no comfortable place out front and the back deck is highway noise. I'll play out there to enjoy the air, though. The top step of my front porch might work better if i brought a cushion out. Half the year is too cold or too humid, so it's limited. Lots of kids running around connects me to my younger years when my kid was a kid and not a Medic. I find it relaxing. Been here 23 years next month. a bit of the open-flow of the house beyond my nice guitar storage cabinet.

Thanks, Lars! I did have some thoughts to that end. Thanks, Boyd! That is one of the better home studios in the history of home studios. I still remember the video you posted. Thanks, Red333!

I forgot to thank BK and j45Nick. Thank! One other small note on the subject of....... This was a real concern on many levels. I totally wrapped it all with 1/2" of Dacron and went for something less porous than burlap, though cotton was not a great choice as it sags and some of it needs to be stretched and re-staple already. Those layers were for odor protection and air-born particles. As far as the air of the room with regards to sound reverberating around the room, reflection-free area was an option, but still is a partial concern. Part of the build would have had to include many large areas of calculated reflective surfaces and diffusion. My room and budget were both way to small for this. I had to do a reduced version of this, which is what you see. I'm going experiment more with reflective materials and do a song in there in hopes of determining any dead spots, noisy spots, etc. Once I have that down, then I will make more permanent additions facings where the end spots will be. For now, exposed pegboard and plastic. As part of that last step will be the front of the closet-trap. I will make either a masonite cover that will have 24-48 inch alternating patterns of drill holes, a wooden slat system or a skyline diffuser system. All pictured below from a brief google-search. The slats and the random drill hole versions will both assist with reducing the 70Hz dip. BAD panel - or Binary diffusion pattern and a skyline style - smaller ones may be incorporated in the "live" half of the room. The masonite or other very thin wood-based product thing with the carefully spaced holes will likely win out unless it's clear that the wood slat design will do more to help me with the 70Hz bass dip. In the end, I might just purchase a couple of skyline style diffusers for added audible air.

Thanks Murph! I searched far and wide for the magic. There's a $2,600(and up) contraption most easily described as a backwards sub-woofer. ewwwww!!!!!! stranger-danger! LOL

I tried. I scoffed at the notion. I needed lots of depth somewhere, even with membrane-based traps. Back walls are noted low-end monsters(gathering points) and the SPL meter confirmed when sending out low-end sine waves. Putting 7-inch bass traps in front of the closet did nothing for the low end, though it did help starting in the low mids. Nerd alert for anyone interested - a free to use web-based little online calculator that shows one the effectiveness of porous material (insulation, foam) and thicknesses needed and the frequency ranges affected. Use the default flow resistivity. Porous Absorption Calculator

Indulge me. What are your room dimensions? I hear you. I fought this tooth and nail. I even considered the previous round over-kill. It's difficult to explain how jealous I am of people who can record something nice without having to do a thing. The modal ringing was so bad that it effected plugged in guitars' tracked tone. Even those rubber sound-hole plugs failed. Electric guitars not even being plugged in caused this modal ringing.

Switched to two different services before I found one that worked. 'oy!!! Bed time for this old man.

Thanks for letting me know. I checked a different browser and sure enough. No images. I'll figure it out or give up on google images.....

OK, one more pic oh, and mods, please, pretty please don't move? I would love to engage willing fellow acoustic guitar tracking enthusiasts in conversation on tracking acoustic guitars. OK - the highlighted line is the "after" in this before and after of the low mids and lows. This is before the big improvement the other day. I'll post an updated. Oh, note that the big dip near 500Hz is the desk.