artists » Bob Rock (2)

Hello fellow VOX fanatics! I’m producer Bob Rock (Metallica, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Our Lady Peace, The Cult, Bryan Adams, Cher) and I’m here to talk about some recording tips, which may be helpful to you when you’re in the studio recording with your VOX amps. I love recording with my VOX amps and use them often in the studio.

My first recording tip revolves around recording multiple amps. I usually use anywhere from two to five amps at once when recording, and that really thickens up the overall guitar sound. The different sounds of each amp lend themselves to a really rich, thick rhythm guitar sound. Here’s a scenario that I used when recording with Our Lady Peace.

As usual, I relied on one of my old favorites: the VOX AC30TB top boost. The amp is a tried and true favorite of mine. It always sounds great! I usually mic it up with a Shure SM57. I dial in a decent tone (very slightly overdriven, just a hint of dirt) with the AC30 and move on to the next amp. Keep in mind if you have two Valvetronix amps, you could dial in the AC30TB model on the first amp!

In this case with Our Lady Peace, I then brought out my VOX Valvetronix AD120VTH head and AD412 cab and also mic’ed it with an SM57. I love this amp! It has every great amp sound and effect all built into one box. To contrast the lightly overdriven sound of the AC30TB, I selected the ‘Recto’ amp model on the AD120VTH. The modern, hi-gain sound of the Recto model mated up well with the jangly, lightly overdriven sound of the AC30TB.

I find that when recording rhythm guitars, the sound tends to get a bit too saturated distortion wise. It makes the tone a little muddy. So, once I dialed in a cool sound with the Recto setting, I took the guitar and unplugged it from the HIGH input (high gain) and plugged it into the LOW input (low gain). Plugging into the LOW input helped to give a bit more clarity and reduce the saturation while retaining the overall tone that I was going for. This is great when recording distorted rhythm guitars.

Another way to do it is to record one pass of the guitar part with the guitar plugged into the HIGH input and again through the LOW input. Then you can mix them both together to your liking for better articulation. For added thickness when using the Recto model, try adding a little delay. It thickened up the sound of the Recto program even more!

From there, a whole spectrum of sounds is available to you with the Valvetronix. There are so many combinations to work with! The combination of the AC30TB’s sparkle and jangliness combined with the girth and gain of the Recto model gave me a killer rhythm sound. I highly recommend trying this out. Next time, we’ll talk about the VOX Valvetronix ToneLab. I’ve just started using it in the studio and it sounds killer! Until next time?

Bob Rock

AUDIO MP3 - Bob Rock talks about his Vox (392kb)