Situation 2:
Acoustic Guitar
For this clip, I really took the Colour Box
through its paces, and here it really flexes
its 1073 muscles. Instead of grabbing my
condenser mic, I grabbed the SM57 out
of my mic locker to really see how
detailed the Colour Box could get. While
not being my typical choice for acoustic
sources, the focused midrange that
makes it a favorite among engineers for
miking cabs can make it sound a little
anemic on an acoustic. Let’s listen in and
see what it does:
Although the basic midfocused character
of the tone is still there, the Colour
Box seemed to add a little bit more of
everything. The low-mids are brought
forward and given a hearty amount of
fatness, while some high end detail is
brought forward as well, giving a bit more
presence to the attack of the pick.
amounts of time and money researching,
reading, tweaking, and playing our rigs
(you wouldn’t be reading this if you
weren’t). However, with all the flash
and miles of patch cables, meticulously
researched overdrives and windowshattering amp stacks, sometimes nothing
beats a good DI tone. For its form, fit,
and function, it has found its way onto
countless recordings throughout the
generations, and its pure and simple tone
is almost too important a tool to ignore in
the studio. It’s the unadulterated sound
of the guitar, and while it may seem a
little boring or sterile without all the fancy
electronic fixin’s heaped on top of it, a
good DI tone can be the missing piece of
the endless puzzle that is the final mix.
The Colour Box is surrounded by
marketing for music business’s historically
great DI tones with big names such as
Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Queen, and many
others being touted as cannon fodder
for the unsuspecting consumer. Luckily
for us, the Colour Box actually functions
incredibly well as a DI, as we will hear in
the clips below (I used the same D. Allen
Echoes Strat into the Focusrite 2i2):
Situation 3:
DI Box
I’m sure most of us spend copious
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