Electrical engineers: is this possible?

[J M Fahey]

If you want to hear fizz, try a Peavey speaker. Those are the most fizzy.

Wrong blanket statement of the day.

*WHICH* "Peavey speaker"?

They must have used 1000 different sounding ones.

Not forgetting that most are made by Eminence and are like many used by most others.

And among their (VERY different sounding) home made ones:

*Sheffield are accurate reproductions of Celestions.
Not *exact* bus as accurate as, say, Eminence "British inspired" ones.

*Scorpions are *killer* PA`speakers, complete with curvilinear cones, edgewound aluminum-on-kapton coils, etc.
Can justly be called "mini EV" and if they have any defect, is that they are "too Hi Fi"

* Black Widows are, yes, sharp, buzzy, biting .... not surprising for JBL copies, down to curvilinear cones, 4" edgewound aluminum coils and **HUGE** magnets.

Not the ticket for Blues or Heavy Metal but just what the Doctor ordered for Steel guitar.
Not surprisingly the most popular "Nashville" and "Vegas" amps today come factory equipped with BW .... big factor in their success.

But you put them all in the same tiny bag

[km6xz]

Late to the party so apparently you found something that worked as you expected. But the problem was never identified so with another track or session you might come up with another undesirable sound and go through the same process again. What sounds fizzy? The repro system, amp, recording system, acoustics, mics?
One point among the many suggestions that was missed was that every session in a pro studio is an experiment of trying to minimize the undesired traits, many which are unique to that session combining the artist's traits, the sound producing gear, the detection/sampling gear(mics or transducers), room acoustics, near field acoustics(good first focus of this problem), and all behind the glass(control room side). Regardless of what you think is a great mic, on some combinations of the above, it is the worst possible and in some combinations that $18 Radio Shack mic was perfect.
Just like any properly attempted repair, diagnostics and system understanding is essential for consistent positive results and anything less is relying on luck.
Recording and subsequent repro of sound is completely different universe than playing and hearing live in the same acoustic environment. What sounds great in the room often is poor when reproduced. A recording focuses on getting whole system from playing to final reproduction optimized for the results in someone's headsets, car stereo or home system that the artist, producer and songwriter intended. What it sounds like in the capture room only impacts the player and says little about the end result. Sometimes you need to introduce "problems" in the normal sense to get the final results. For example a recording piano for rock, R&B or some jazz is not one a player would choose for a live performance without PA. My studio had 3 large grands, a Steinway acquired from Stevie Wonder after we used it to record the album Songs in the Key of Life. It was set up "normal" and we had 2 large Yamaha's, one with shaved and hardened hammers. For recorded repro on records, the shaved hammers sound more natural and was on hundreds of major records, and the Steinway that sounded great in the same room just did not transfer the same feeling into the listener's home. The harder sounding Yamaha sounded hard in the acoustic environment of the studio but was perfect for most songs in the final playback.
Same with amps and speakers. Position and orientation of mics impact the data captured on tape/disk more than eq and effects. We never had time to endlessly experiment to get the optimum but knew from experience positions to try first to narrow the options down, after hearing the room sound and knowing the intent of the song in repro. But just starting out in recording you do have all the time in the world to experiment. Fizzy sound usually involves spectrum that falls off dramatically or is boosted greatly based on mic orientation and distance.

The pro you took the project to, getting the same sound, not better or worse, but the same, is probably not so much more pro than you are. I would expect him to get a close enough sound in a few seconds. Maybe he did but your repro system is generating the fizzy sound due to combinations of elements of the recorded information and post processing that makes it audible.
There is a reason....many...why hobbyists seldom get decent recordings regardless of gear. It is a different philosophy, I call the "hi-fi" model that assumes that a perfect amp and speaker, recorded by a perfect mic and perfect recorder and perfect playback system, the results should be a perfect clone of the live experience. In reality, recording and live sound are as related as sculpture and photography, different mediums, both capable of expression and emotional communications but they are not to be confused with one being a clone of the other. Recording is not capturing sound. It is fashioning a desired listening experience at the time of playback and what the original sound elements are that going into it are unknown and often unrelated except on the most tenuous way, to a live performance.
I am not talking about digital manipulation per se, but any recording with any medium, the viewer/listener experience is the design goal. That even applies to classical where listeners claim is it captured realistic reproduction of the original performance. It is not, but the design goal of a talented producer/engineer is to give that impression.
The reason for the disconnect between hi-fi capture and reproduction is that nothing in the chain is closely related to its analog. A mic is nothing like ears. Ears are dumber than mics but are attached to incredibly complex brain processing that derives information, real or not far in excess of what a mic can do. Speakers are nothing like an acoustic field set as in a performance where each sound source has a million reflection paths, of varying path length and selective absorption that tells the brain a great deal more about the source and environment than the point sources and time aligned paths of all the sources. That so many people confuse recordings and live is a testament to how good recordists are and says nothing about equipment.

So all that considered....diagnosis the problem and make changes in the simple things like mic position, levels, distance and move on.

[Leo_Gnardo]

The producer in the studio I'm using these days told me that low-wattage amps just can't record well. I didn't believe him--- and now I don't know what to think..

Mr Producer has his ears up his @$$. Small amps don't record well? Well "Layla" must really suck according to him, a couple champs and a Pignose. Several million buyers over the last 43 years disagree with Mr Producer. He just hasn't figured out yet what Tom Dowd knew half a century ago. You're right to doubt him and I'm happy you found a useful (and dead cheap) amp in the Orange MT.

[Bad Daddy DeVille]

What sounds fizzy? The repro system, amp, recording system, acoustics, mics?

...diagnosis the problem and make changes in the simple things like mic position, levels, distance and move on.

I obviously can't speak to ron vogel's experience with his Marshall Class 5, but in my case, what sounded fizzy were the amplifiers I used. Every one produced a fizzy, buzzy sound when distorted. The problem existed before the recording stage in the process. In the attempt to "diagnose the problem" I tried numerous amps. I tried numerous different tubes in those amps. I tried numerous speakers. I tried numerous overdrive pedals, thinking that perhaps getting the crunch sound with a pedal would allow me to reduce gain on the various amps. I tried a cab simulator from JDX. I also tried numerous mics, mic placements and mic orientations to see if I could minimize the problem in the recordings. None of the "simple things like mic position, levels, distance" etc. had any effect.

The "pro I took the project to" got the same sound because he was using the same amp and the fizz was in the amp. That wasn't a reflection on his professionalism but on the physics of the amp I was using.

The solution happened not as a result of making "changes in the simple things", but --by sheer luck-- from buying an unlikely, cheap Chinese-made amp on a whim, which just happens to not produce fizz.

[ron vogel]

I obviously can't speak to ron vogel's experience with his Marshall Class 5, but in my case, what sounded fizzy were the amplifiers I used. Every one produced a fizzy, buzzy sound when distorted. The problem existed before the recording stage in the process. In the attempt to "diagnose the problem" I tried numerous amps. I tried numerous different tubes in those amps. I tried numerous speakers. I tried numerous overdrive pedals, thinking that perhaps getting the crunch sound with a pedal would allow me to reduce gain on the various amps. I tried a cab simulator from JDX. I also tried numerous mics, mic placements and mic orientations to see if I could minimize the problem in the recordings. None of the "simple things like mic position, levels, distance" etc. had any effect.

The "pro I took the project to" got the same sound because he was using the same amp and the fizz was in the amp. That wasn't a reflection on his professionalism but on the physics of the amp I was using.

The solution happened not as a result of making "changes in the simple things", but --by sheer luck-- from buying an unlikely, cheap Chinese-made amp on a whim, which just happens to not produce fizz.

Ha, Found my old thread when I was playing around with my class 5:
http://music-electronics-forum.com/t19680/

Fizz was in the convo.

[soundguruman]

Wrong blanket statement of the day.

*WHICH* "Peavey speaker"?

They must have used 1000 different sounding ones.

Not forgetting that most are made by Eminence and are like many used by most others.

And among their (VERY different sounding) home made ones:

*Sheffield are accurate reproductions of Celestions.
Not *exact* bus as accurate as, say, Eminence "British inspired" ones.

*Scorpions are *killer* PA`speakers, complete with curvilinear cones, edgewound aluminum-on-kapton coils, etc.
Can justly be called "mini EV" and if they have any defect, is that they are "too Hi Fi"

* Black Widows are, yes, sharp, buzzy, biting .... not surprising for JBL copies, down to curvilinear cones, 4" edgewound aluminum coils and **HUGE** magnets.

Not the ticket for Blues or Heavy Metal but just what the Doctor ordered for Steel guitar.
Not surprisingly the most popular "Nashville" and "Vegas" amps today come factory equipped with BW .... big factor in their success.

But you put them all in the same tiny bag

All you gotta do is record the same guitar part twice.. with two speakers.

Try an EVM VS. PV speaker...or a JBL VS. Peavey speaker...

Now listen to the playback.
Now you realize just how bad a peavey speaker sounds. Done.

Even a tone deaf person can hear the difference, yes even you.

[Bad Daddy DeVille]

I'll bet there's no fizz in your Princeton! (Okay, it's a different type of amp altogether...)

[soundguruman]

There was no mixer involved in the recording. (I haven't used an actual mixing desk in years.) The signal path is speaker ---> mic ---> Onyx Blackjack USB Recording Interface ---> computer. I dialed down the gain control on the interface so that it wasn't clipping digitally.

The gain control is the record level.
Not a mic pad. Not the input level.
Your mic is overloading the input of the recording interface.

Get a professional interface, with a input mic pad.
You can't expect professional result from non professional equipment.

[Bad Daddy DeVille]

I appreciate your persistence but the problem was in the amps, not the recording of the amps. It was not poorly executed recordings. The recordings faithfully captured the fizzy sound that was there in the speaker, as a result of the amplifier. None of the mics I used overloaded the input of the recording interface. When I changed the amp, I used the same mics, speakers and recording techniques and there was no problem any more.

[g1]

The original statement seemed to imply that you had eliminated the amp as the cause of the problem. Maybe that is why a lot of the responses are about the recording being the cause of the problem.
So I'm assuming there are a lot of fizzy amps out there and the Orange MT was the only one you could find that wasn't fizzy?

When I record distorted guitars ---regardless of which amp and/or speaker cabinet I use--- I get a nasty fizzy sound.

[Bad Daddy DeVille]

Yes, g-one, the whole reason I came here looking for help was because I assumed that since I had tried so many combinations of so many elements and still couldn't get an acceptable rock crunch sound then the problem must've been my technique. I figured I was doing something wrong, overlooking something that everybody in the world but me knows not to overlook. I live on an island thirty miles out in the Atlantic Ocean, so it's not like I could go anywhere and sample amps, or even go haunt a bunch of studios asking for advice and observing what others did to get electric guitar sounds. Searching online in discussion groups, I found a lot of people talking about the "fizz" problem, one guy describing it as a "bottle of bees". The second I plugged in that cheap Micro Terror amp and played a power chord, I knew I'd found the sound I'd been looking for.

Bear in mind that the amps I tried out were all in the $300 to $550-ish price range. I'm sure if I'd bought a boutique recording amp I would've gotten a usable sound. So, in other words, a hand-wired boutique amp might have sounded as good as that $150 Orange lunchbox amp!

[DrGonz78]

I like the idea of using an amp with less output wattage in a studio. Also, using an amp with only one speaker is ideal in most situations. It sounds like you did all that you could with proximity effects and other micing techniques. So, the fizz sound is coming from the amp. When it is overdriven and turned up did you like the sound when playing the lead parts? You say that only when in the studio you hear this fizzy sound. A close mic and a room mic make for some great sounds. Just like Ron Vogel had said with the 57 close mic'd and the AT4050 room mic'd. That is key to the type of music you are playing.

Another thought is about EQ on the guitar amp in regard to how it differs from performance to studio. How much did you play around with the EQ? What was your outcome there?

Even perhaps cranking the amp louder pushes the speaker differently and you won't get that fizz sound as much. However in those situations you need to pad the mic input and have a good isolation from the amp to really monitor your recording effectively. Best regards and it sounds like your happy with your setup now!

[Leo_Gnardo]

Yes, g-one, I live on an island thirty miles out in the Atlantic Ocean, so it's not like I could go anywhere and sample amps, or even go haunt a bunch of studios asking for advice and observing what others did to get electric guitar sounds.

Oh yeah I forgot you're on Nantucket - and nearly half a century ago that was the haunt of another musician who "found his sound" and sure as heck made hay with it, Felix Pappalardi. Buzzy sounding bass, you bet, but when he played you sure knew who it was. Up until nearly the end, the albums he produced had awesome tone. Some of his spirit must still be "in the air" and I think you're finding it. Good stuff & keep us posted.

[J M Fahey]

All you gotta do is record the same guitar part twice.. with two speakers.

Try an EVM VS. PV speaker...or a JBL VS. Peavey speaker...

Now listen to the playback.
Now you realize just how bad a peavey speaker sounds. Done.

Even a tone deaf person can hear the difference, yes even you.

You are still tripping with your own feet.
You still think there's only **ONE** Peavey speaker, while there are thousands.

And if the problem is buzz, you have it backwards.
EV and JBL speakers, excellent as they are, will be the buzzier ones.
Because of the extended high frequency range, that is .
Which of course, you don't recognize, hear or even see in the response curves

[Bad Daddy DeVille]

It may have been that lower wattage was contributing to the fizzy sound, in that the amps with the fizz were 15 watts or less, and the Orange MicroTerror is 20 watts... but that's far from a certainty. I tried various different eq settings on the fizzy amps to no avail. The no-fizz Micro Terror has one tone control (from Bass to Treble) and I've had it at a number of different settings from around 40% to around 60% and they all sound good. The tone control is very reactive: turning it so that the indicator moves the mere width of itself produces a change distinct enough to hear as a difference. I start dialing in a sound by having all three controls Volume Tone Gain at the 12 o'clock position, halfway between min and max on each one. Just like that is a great crunchy sound. Then I give it a little more gain/less volume if that's what I'm going for, or less gain/more volume if I want to clean it up. I then strum the guitar and tweak the tone knob 'til the sound has the right feel for the track and I'm in business.

The Vox AC15C1 I bought is a great sounding amp --even though it was too fizzy for the crunch sound I was going for. The songs I'm recording parts for are pure 100% rock music, so I wanted a truly classic sound. Think "Mississippi Queen" by Mountain, which is to me the holy grail of ballsy rock guitar tone. The Vox is just a different type of amp. Lots of great players have gotten great crunch sounds out of AC30's but it wasn't that really classic rock sound I was looking for.

I tried a few different speakers looking for break-up ---Celestion Greenback, Bad Cat custom, Eminence Legend, etc.) but ended up using my monster the ElectroVoice 12L Series II. Interestingly, running the Marshall HAZE 15 through it caused the nastiest fizz. The Micro Terror doesn't cause any fizz at all, and produces the best tone. The Bad Cat custom has gone into the AC15 to tame its brittle highs, the Greenback will go into the little combo I made to house the Micro Terror and the rest are going on eBay. Along with all the other stuff I bought on my search for tone!