Thoughts on studio setup

[jkstraw]

Hi,

I have small home studio - mainly used for playing live and recording what I am doing. I have a bit of a problem with GAS and am trying to rethink how I have things routed so I am not constantly unplugging, re-plugging and generally swapping everything around.

To simplify things a bit - I was thinking about the following:

1. Sources/instruments (guitars, mics, keys, drums) going into my mixer (using a DI when appropriate)
2. Mixer outputs (Aux 1/4" and XLR) to 3 main chains: (a), (b), (c)
(a) Vintage rig- vintage effects -> guitar amp (no recording - just great tones!)
(b) Modern rig- modern effects -> guitar amp (no recording - just great tones!)
(c) Digital rig - AxeFx II -> back to mixer (feeding the looper from different sources, vocal monitoring, recording to DAW)

I spend 95% of my time playing with a looper - just laying down some rhythm, jamming and singing. What I love to do is listen/monitor my vintage or modern rig and loop and record the digital rig version to my looper and DAW. (small space is not great for capturing the analog rigs via mics - too much bleed with vocals and looper tracks blasting through the PA)

I also want the ability to route other sources (mics, drums, keys) to the looper as well.

I've over thought this too much - I gotten to the point where I was thinking about using the FX loop on the AxeFx to get the dry guitar signal to a Radial ABY where I can split it to the two different analog rigs at will (and then use the AxeFx as usual to record and loop with via the mixer/audio interface).

Just looking for thoughts from anyone who has approached a similar task and found a good solution.

Cheers

 

[whuppo]

Nah...the beauty of getting up and moving mics and amps and pedals and etc is that every now and then you make a mistake and something unexpected happens and maybe you run a keyboard or drums through your guitar rig or....
Just my opinion, of course, but doing this long enough to embrace happy accidents, chaos sometimes and a break in the norm

 

[Darbarian]

I run a live set up in my studio for recording. With the right mics you can pull it off with separation and be able to track your vocals on a second take. I run a looper and two amps with an a/b/y. My looper is a EHX 45000 with the foot controller and I made a pedistol mount for the 4 track looper/mixer. It also has 2 inputs/outputs. I’d take a look at it for what you want to do. It has 4 faders so you can mix your loops on the fly. Really, it’s like an old school 4 track.

I use e906 on my guitar amps, a set of sm81 on the drums and sing through a pa without much bleed. I also have a sm7 under my vocal mic for the pa that gets my vocal recording on the live take. It’s the only mic that gets considerable bleed from the room.

 

[slayerbear17]

If your tired of unplugging and replugging, get your self a patchbay. I found it saves me tonnes of time and opens up alot of options.