I'm told that if you master a recording repeatedly it will oversaturate the sound quality and become lo-fi. Repeat continuously and it will probably sound 'blown out' ie "Pink" by Boris. I imagine increasing bass frequencies significantly on the guitar and bass tracks could help. Maybe boost the treble some afterwards to retain definition.

154 wrote:hitting the tape hard would be ideal for that type of sound, but simply overdriving some of the mic preamps can get you close. distorting the crap out of room mics is a cool trick. i'm thinking along the lines of Chrome 'half machine lip moves' or 6FS 'severe exposure'..

(what i was going to say.)

listening to Cherub's "Heroin Man" through low fidelity sample on artistdirect.com and pc speakers it seems that there is no need to saturate the whole mix or do any kind of studio tricks.
Just a predominant very heavy distorted guitar maybe with a mesa rectifier or similar and fuzz sometimes. Maybe a 7 string also.

carlsaff wrote:When Neutrino recorded with Steve, we had a section of one track that we wanted to sound this way. We bussed the entire mix to a cassette deck with the input gain cranked. Most professional decks are designed to *not* distort, but it's pretty easy to get a cassette deck (even a pro one) to distort in the way that you describe.

So try it out: crank the gain on a cassette deck, route the mix to that deck's inputs, then route the outputs of the cassette deck to your mastering deck, and record.

I'm a big fan of the overloaded cassette deck.

Silkworm did that trick a few times, if we were used to hearing schmutz on the demo or from singing through shitty monitors or whatever.

Mostly w/individual tracks, as opposed to complete mixes.

I have an old Fostex X-15 4tk that sounds terrific overloaded. The mic-level inputs, turned all the way up, have this super hairy distortion that avoids being irritating somehow.

The 'better' cassette 4tk I have--Tascam Portastudio--can't do this nearly as well.

Generally, the crappier the cassette player, the better it's going to crack up. Cheapo boomboxes can sound kind of amazing in their way when they are blowing up like that.

The other thing I would note: if you are hearing the schmutz as you are playing, you will play differently than you would w/o it. Adding it as an effect later on is a different thing.

I would suggest trying to make it part of your sound, by putting the schmutz directly to tape. Another nice thing about this is that you get preamp stage overload + tape saturation, as opposed to just the preamp overload (if used as an outboard effect).

You have to commit to it in advance, of course, and there would be no going back from the schmutz at that point.

through decent speakers they sound far far different! however i feel i'm always missing something due to poor samples. uh i also like this band.

omaroski wrote:listening to Cherub's "Heroin Man" through low fidelity sample on artistdirect.com and pc speakers it seems that there is no need to saturate the whole mix or do any kind of studio tricks.

I believe their records were mostly "blown out" in mastering. (This is based on comments by Austin mastering engineer Jerry Tubb.)

Yes, they are, but if you listen with pc speakers (plus bad sample rate), like i was, you really can't get the ''blown out'' feeling the record has.
I agree with you now that i listened with some better speakers.

This waveform of Iggy Pop's remastered Raw Power album always cracks me up. Is it possible to clip this thing any more? I think not. Text book example of "the loaf".

Admittedly, I haven't seen the waveform of Guitar Wolf's Jet Generation. I almost made a poo in my pants the first time I threw that on.

Here is a song I did about 7 or 8 years ago.

http://www.feedbackloop.net/gvsg/homede ... ngheld.mp3

If I'm remembering correctly, the mix had a Big Muff on one side, and a SansAmp GT-2 on the other side. I forget if I put them in the stereo buss inserts, or if I put them in two pre-fader aux sends, and then routed the outputs to two open channels. It was probably the latter.

Ben Adrian

double micing two champs or just 5wat tube amps sounds great if you use an AKG vocal(something with that response) in front and a ribbon facing away in back. made it simple mixing because ribbons picked up such good lower frequency breakup, and AKG held mid and high range 5k and up. it's good to do this in a nice little room. I used millisecond delay oriented to the AKG's because the ribbons where about two feet off the back. Strait to tape and bingo. Even added a tad of tape yum. Most champs and 5watters get that blown sound with that big signal at about 3-5, but if you keep it at 2-3 there's still so much more coloring than just runnin' the signal through a mic pre or one of those cheapo ART things.