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Re-Amping

So you’ve got a song that’s just about there but the guitar sound is lacking something. You can re-record the guitar part but what if you can’t get the part re-played or don’t have time to get a session together? Here’s another option for you – Re-Amping the guitar track. Let’s look at how this works and how you can integrate the technique into your own studio.

Re-Amping is a simple concept; take a recorded guitar track, run the output of the track to a real amp, mic up the speaker and re-record the part back into the DAW or multitrack. Simple enough but there are some things to consider for it to work properly and be most effective. First of all, when you record guitar it’s a good idea to split the guitarists signal by sending one signal from the guitar to the amp you’re recording the another signal to a direct box and into the DAW. The idea is to capture the dry, direct tone as a safety track so that you can work magic with it later if necessary. Once you have that dry track recorded you can put an amp modeling plugin (like Native Instruments Guitar Rig or IK Multimedia’s Amplitube) on it and try out different sounds to enhance or perhaps even replace the original mic’d guitar track. The other thing you can do is route the dry track to its own output and send it back to an amplifier that you can then mic and record. That’s where reamping comes in.

To reamp properly you’ll need a device like Radial’s X-Amp or Reamp from reamp.com. These devices take the high-level output of the DAW or audio interface and convert it down to a low-level signal which simulates the response a guitar would have when plugged into the amp. Mic the amp, dial in the sound you want and playback the track while recording the signal back into the DAW. Note that it’s important to use a reamping device here – you may get results without one but probably not to your liking. Simulating the response of the guitar signal is an important part of the process.

Advantages of reamping include the ability to playback a guitar track and position the mic on the amp properly to get the best tone – something that’s difficult sometimes if you’re the engineer and performer. You can use the technique to enhance a guitar track or perhaps even replace it. The technique also works on MIDI tracks – try sending a cheesy MIDI guitar sound into a real amp for some character or give a MIDI bass part more life by running it through a real bass amp. The drawbacks come if you don’t have a dry/direct guitar track to work with. You can use reamping on a track that’s already been captured with a mic or through a modeler but the results may not be all that great if the original track is a heavily distorted guitar tone. In that case, reamping may just be able to add some life to the track but may not be as effective as what you’d get by working with a dry/direct tone.

Your mileage may vary but this is a fun technique to experiment with. There are no hard and fast rules and you never know when something as simple as a reamping device could save the day. Consider picking one up and adding it to your toolbox – you’ll be happy you did.