In the final week of recording we added the guitar solo and acoustic guitar. Callum set up the Pro Tools session, and Clem worked on the desk. James W, Ross and I set up Alex for his recording first, and the mics are listed below:
- An AKG 414, used as a room mic. We set the polar pattern to omni-directional, and had a bass roll off of 40Hz.
- 2 Shure SM57s placed in the same set up as with the guitar tracking, one placed at the centre of the speaker, and one at its edge. When the phase was reversed, they cancelled each other out nicely, and so produced a good full sound.
The actual recording went very well. Alex messed his solo up a few times, as the jack input on his guitar was a bit iffy, and this caused a crackle to appear on the recording. He stood up a bit, but then began to miss the first note after the first bend, and so sat back down again. The final take was a good one, so we then moved on the acoustic section.
I was providing this, so got myself set up while Ross and James W set up the mics for me. We used the same mics as we had done with the solo, but moved the 414 back against the wall and gave it a bass roll off 160Hz. We moved the 57s as well, one to record the fretboard movement and mid tone, and one to record the more bassy notes of the sound box. Setting levels took a while, but I managed to do the part in one take, so we finished up with plenty of time.