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Everything You Need To Know About Playing And Recording With The ‘Blackbird’ Vacuum Tube Preamp

The Effectrode ‘Blackbird’ vacuum tube preamp was designed with two things in mind. Firstly, as a professional direct recording tool for electric guitar and secondly, as a means of adding switchable authentic “Dumble” overdrive/distortion channels to older style vintage tube amps. The Blackbird can also be connected directly to PA systems, or hi-fi amps, to allow guitarists to create some genuinely realistic tube amp tones. This article takes an in-depth look at how to apply recording technique and effects processing to extract the absolute best sonic performance from the Blackbird in each of these situations.

When playing through a Guitar Amp

The Blackbird can be used to augment older or boutique single channel guitar amps to add blues and tube saturated overdrive channels, a Fender ‘Blackface’ clean channel and boost capability to the amp.

It has to be said, there’s something special about the tone of vintage guitar amps built on simple, even primitive tube circuitry. Many of these older amps are sought-after for their presence, clarity and headroom and it could be argued that, despite half a century of technological ‘progress’ in the amp industry, the clean sound of an old a Fender ‘Twin Reverb’ or Laney head still remain unmatched by many of the ‘feature-rich’ amps manufactured today. But the one thing these vintage amps lack is the ability to generate those fat, rich overdriven and saturated tube distortion sounds that modern amplifiers, such as those designed by Randall Smith (Boogie) and Mike Soldano, are capable of.

Laney head — The 'Blackbird' tube preamp adds switchable overdrive and distortion channels to older amps such as this Laney 60W head.

Back in the 1950s musical instrument amps were intended to simply amplify guitar so that it could be heard when being played along with the horn section and drums in the context of a big band. In short, guitar amplifiers were built as well as it was technically feasible to do so at the time, that is designed for lowest possible distortion. In those days distortion in amplifiers was not a wanted or desired thing. The idea of using distortion as an effect had yet to be imagined and, even if it had, the audience probably wouldn’t have been ready for it (remember Marty Mcfly’s Eddie Van Halen inspired version of ‘Johnny B. Goode’ in ‘Back to the Future’?).

But by the late sixties tastes began to change and distortion became the thing for electric guitar. An electric guitar plugged into a distortion box and amp gave the guitarist access to much thicker, more sustaining harmonically rich tones, effectively endowing the instrument with a powerful and soulful voice. Guitar players could now compete with the expressive sounds of saxophone and other brass and wind instruments and today distortion, especially milder overdrive tones, are still where it’s all at for many electric guitar players. And this is where the Effectrode Blackbird truly excels—creating those subtle tube overdrive tones on the boundary between clean and breaking-up, where the guitar signal doesn’t even sound that distorted, just thicker, more full-bodied, emotive and expressive as demonstrated in the following sound clip by John Verity.

Just for the record, the Blackbird isn’t a model, a simulation or someone’s idea about what a tube amp should sound like, it is a tube amp, the real McCoy and like any good tube amp, it authentically generates rich, bluesy overdrive and saturated tube distortion. The Blackbird contains two entirely independent tube preamp sections. Each section features its own dedicated Fender ‘Blackface’ BASS-MIDDLE-TREBLE tone stack. These passive tone controls are built on audiophile polyester capacitors and precision grade metal-film resistors. This marriage of high-quality components and analogue all-tube circuitry ensures that the fundamental, beautiful tube sound of a guitar amp remains pristine and intact when the Blackbird is inserted between the guitar and the amp—important stuff if you want to avoid messing with the mojo of your amps’ tone.

Additionally, the Blackbird’s overdrive channel section has switchable gain (‘CLASSIC’ and ‘CREAMY’ modes), effectively adding a third, even higher gain ‘modern’ harmonically saturated distortion channel to an amp. To keep noise to an absolute minimum, the tube heaters are powered with D.C. and the H.T. power supply (real amp plate voltages of 300VDC) is heavily smoothed and regulated. The Blackbird is exceptionally quiet at moderate, and even extremely high gains, as demonstrated in this sound clip below.

No noise gates are utilised in the Blackbird’s tube circuitry, or any other Effectrode pedals, as these devices more often than not have an adverse effect on tone often choking the signal and even distorting the sound in an unpleasant way. One situation where a noise gates are useful for guitar is for tightening up super-saturated, grungy chord work, but nine times out of ten, for blues, rock, jazz, folk, pop and country guitar a noise works against good tone. Gates prevent the signal from breathing and impair the natural, singing sustain of a good electric guitar being played through a tube amp. And, for milder overdrive sounds noise gates really shouldn’t be necessary at all—it’s perfectly feasible to design tube electronics that are quiet enough to do the job without introducing unacceptable noise contamination into the signal.

Noise Gates 101

A noise gate is the exact opposite of a limiter—an ideal ‘brickwall’ limiter prevents a signal from going above a “ceiling” level (maximum threshold), whereas a noise gate removes signal from below a “floor” level (minimum threshold). And, just like a limiter can be regarded as extreme compression, a noise gate is extreme expansion. When used as an effect for electric guitar, compression increases sustain and expansion reduces it.

Principle of noise gates — When the signal level drops below a set threshold the noise gate closes and no signal can pass through (cross-hatched areas).

When Playing Through a PA

Vintage PA speakers such this pair of Dukane 9935A 8" wall speakers have pretty much the same frequency and power handling specifications as those found in early tube amps such the Fender 'Champ' and Gibson 'Skylark'.

There are many musicians who are seeking to reduce the amount of baggage they take on the road with them when gigging. The Blackbird can help guitarists travel considerably lighter—if there’s an in-house PA system already installed at the venue then there’s no need to cart a tube amp there. The Blackbird can be connected directly to the PA making it possible to obtain excellent live guitar sounds. In this kind of setup the Blackbird is working as a tube preamp and the power amp (typically solid-state) in the PA is doing all the hard work of pumping electrons to drive the loudspeaker coil to shift the air around. The speaker, that boundary between the electronics and the air, contributes greatly to the sound of electric guitar, but there’s a lot of mojo happening in the tube preamp section too. In fact a great deal of what we consider to be the defining characteristics of an electric guitar’s sound—harmonic distortion, tone shaping, compression—happens in the fiery heart of tube electronics in the preamp.

It goes without saying that the sound of a guitar played through a tube preamp into a solid-state power amp is not exactly the same as playing through a vintage all-tube guitar amp and some extra work is invariably required to sculpt and fine-tune the tone to get it to where we need it to be. Unlike the Dukane speakers pictured above, modern 2- or 3-way PA speakers have a wide frequency response meaning post equalisation is always necessary to help replicate the much more limited high frequency response of a guitar amp speaker, which typically rolls off above the 5 to 6KHz region. Additionally, a small amount of reverb or slap-back delay can help fill out the sound to add depth, body and realism. With a little work the resulting tone can be surprisingly authentic and give a convincing impression of an all tube guitar amp. Some players utilise (analogue or digital convolution) speaker emulators instead of, or in conjunction, with eq and reverb. As to whether this is beneficial to tone is purely subjective. Looking at it technically, the tone is already being affected by the PA speakers so when using a speaker emulator you’re effectively placing the transfer function of a guitar speaker/cab on top of the response of the PA speaker. This may result in a dull tone that lacks clarity and immediacy. In short, speaker emulation may be overkill in this situation when all we really need here is just some equalisation.

Loudspeaker frequency response plot — A guitar speaker typically rolls off at around 6KHz. This limited high-frequency response plays a critical role in determining the character of the instrument, imparting a 'full-bodied' or 'fat' quality to the sound.

When Recording Direct

EMI REDD 17 mixing console — EMI REDD 17 4 track tube mixing console, Abbey Road Studios [Photograph taken on March 16, 2013 by John Vincent].

The Blackbird isn’t just a multi-channel preamp for use with tube amps though, in fact the prime motivation for designing and constructing it was to create a device to enable guitarists to record outstanding electric guitar tone directly to DAW (digital audio workstation). There are several advantages to direct recording. Firstly it negates the need for a tube amp, microphone and a quiet room with decent acoustics (a.k.a. a recording studio). With no amp or microphone in the equation there is none of the hassle of mic placement, ‘boxy’ bedroom acoustics or the nuisance of external background noise from traffic, talking, etc. So, in principle at least, direct recording has a lot going for it… so long as it sounds convincingly real, that is like a guitar plugged into a real tube amp.

When attempting to record guitar direct a basic understanding of acoustics and the recording process is highly beneficial. The important thing to bear in mind that a directly recorded signal is missing three vital ingredients:

The power amp section (tube output stage and transformer)
The speaker/cabinet response
And the room acoustics ambience/reverberation/delay)

All of which have an influence on the sound.

To properly recreate the robust and musical tone of a real tube guitar amp these ingredients must be reintroduced back into the dry tube preamp signal using either effects pedals or software VST plugins. This section discusses how this can be achieved using equalisers, compressors and reverb effects. It also takes a good stab at explaining how the amp/loudspeaker interacts with the guitar to affect not only the tone but the ‘feel’ of the instrument.

Equalisation

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of equalisation as a tool for sculpting great guitar tone when recording direct. A substantial amount of trimming and cutting is required to curtail the higher frequencies to replicate the response of a tube amp loudspeaker which rolls off in the 6 to 7KHz region. These adjustments can be made in a DAW using a graphic or parametric equaliser VST plugin. A graphic eq is more intuitive and straight forward to work with as the position of the faders give a visual representation of the intended frequency response. Which frequencies and the amount of cut requires depends not only on the amp and speaker but also on what type of guitar pickups are fitted (humbucker or single coil), the construction and material used in the guitar and subjective taste. So, equalisation is not only a science it’s an art, but in the main it’s purpose is to knock back those harsh frequencies above the 6KHz region.

There are certain, critical frequencies that need to be cut or boosted when recording overdriven and distorted guitars where tube clipping saturates the frequency spectrum with high order harmonic overtones. All this additional high frequency content means that the guitar tone is straddling a narrow path between either sounding dull and muddy or like a ‘bee in a can’ or a buzz—the judicial listening skills of a mastering engineer need to be exercised. Mid-frequencies, especially will need to be sculpted and shaped to add body, focus to prevent lead guitar solos from being buried in the mix. For example, when recording a ‘Strat’, it’s beneficial to apply some boost around the 800Hz region to help to fatten and warm-up the sound. The balance of mid-frequencies are critical for creating great tone and just a dB of cut or boost here or there can make all the difference between a killer guitar sound and something that sounds lack lustre or just plain uninspiring.

When attempting to create glassy, clean Strat tones or recording an acoustic guitar fitted with a piezo transducer pickup on the soundboard less severe pruning of high frequencies is advised. The classic ‘V’ eq shape is a good starting point to begin, and sometimes to finish operations. An acoustic guitar almost always benefits from some reduction of lower frequency material to minimise any ‘boomy’ and ‘cheap’ qualities in the sound of the instrument. The critical frequencies for ‘cheapness’ lie in the 63Hz to 125Hz range. Removing frequencies below this point will also help minimise conflict between the guitar and the bass and drum tracks ensuring it sits well in the mix.

Frequency response can also be tailored with digital speaker/cabinet simulators. These simulators utilise a clever process known as ‘convolution’ where high-pass, low-pass, band-pass filter impulse responses can be convolved (digitally wrapped around) the signal to superimpose the filter response onto the signal. However, convolution can do more than simulate the basic filter responses, it can also simulate the response of a particular speaker type/manufacturer and/or cabinet or even acoustic spaces to simulate reverberation of say, Sidney Opera House or York Minster cathedral. In comparison with passive or active analogue filters convolution seems like magic or advanced alien technology, however digital convolution speaker cab impulse response emulators do have their shortcomings, sometimes lacking the presence and immediacy of the real thing, almost as if the sound is plastered on top of the original signal. Again, keep calm and carry on—it takes time and patience to obtain outstanding results.

Compression

Some mild compression can help take directly recorded guitar even closer to the sound of the instrument played through a real tube amp. In a tube amp compression occurs in the latter tube preamp sections, tube power section, output transformer, the loudspeaker and power supply rectifier tube. Compression is most noticeable at higher volume levels and is the result of voltage “sag” in the rectifier tube as it attempts to supply enough power to meet the demands of the power amp output stage. Tube amp compression sounds beautifully natural and musical and is conducive to great playing and tone.

Compression is a useful tool for levelling out the dynamics of electric guitar, that is, the varying output levels of the different string thicknesses from low to top E. Vibration of the thinner metal (steel or nickel) strings exert less influence on the magnetic field produced by the poles of the pickup and therefore the coil generates a smaller current (output signal). Compression also evens out dynamics in playing technique, that is the variation of loudness depending on how hard or softly the strings are plucked or hit.

Tube amps normally do an excellent job of evening out these output level variations, however when recording direct this natural sounding compression is completely absent. This absence not only affects the tone but also the feel of the instrument. Without compression the sound of the guitar is less forgiving, less flattering, more often than not working against any idiosyncrasies in playing technique making the instrument a pig to play. Inevitably this will have a negative impact on a musical performance. To summarise, compression is an essential ingredient of not just guitar tone but playability—make good use of it to compensate for the sterile qualities of directly recorded sound.

Just two or three dB of compression will add that final polish and sheen whether finger-picking arpeggios or balancing the levels of single string lead soloing against rhythm/chord playing. Guitarists typically place compression first in the signal chain, pre-overdrive/distortion (pre-Blackbird preamp) so that guitar signal dynamics are evened out before any tube clipping occurs. Compression helps improve the signal to noise ratio when recording and reduces the possibility of any overloads, that is digital or op-amp clipping in the sound capture device. Digital clipping is something that needs to be avoided as it ‘splatters’ the audio band with grating and unpleasant unrelated high harmonic content—nothing at all like the creamy, warm tones of a tube clipping circuit.

Compression can also be applied post-overdrive/distortion. In this case it is working to even-out the harmonic distortion and smooth the overdriven sound. This technique, combined with overtracking guitars was utilised by many rock bands in the 1970s to create some devastatingly smooth overdriven guitar sounds. To summarise compression can be used pre and/or post-overdrive/distortion depending on what characteristics of the signal needed to be levelled or, to put it another way, the desired effect being sought.

Reverb

Reverberation is the final, essential, ingredient that needs to be added to the directly recorded dry signal. The sound of a dry signal without any reverb lacks dimension, is flat, unrealistic and for all intents and purposes unusable. Introducing a small amount of reverb will allow the guitar to breathe again, put it back into an acoustic space and make it convincing. VST plugin reverbs come in two flavours: algorithmic and convolution. Algorithmic reverbs mathematically compute the reverb and mix it with the dry signal whereas convolution reverbs convolve (wrap) the impulse response of a real acoustic space around the dry signal. Examples of top-notch algorithmic reverbs include Valhalla’s smooth, full-bodied ‘Plate’ or ‘Room’ reverb plugins. There are also several excellent free reverb VST plugins out there too such as ‘EpicVerb’ and Kjaerhaus’s ‘Classic Reverb’. And there are also quite a few websites where impulse responses of acoustic spaces, such as churches, cathedrals, tunnels, etc can be downloaded for free and these can be applied using SIR’s free VST convolution plugin—we’re very fortunate to live in such generous times and have access to such fantastic technology.

Convolution and algorithmic reverb plugins can be placed in series to create a more complex, rich reverberation. But reverb should be used sparingly. Only use what is necessary to create the desired effect and nothing more otherwise the sound ends up drowning in a diffuse sea of reverb. It’s difficult to give recommended settings, as the amount of reverb varies widely depending on whether it’s being applied to lead or rhythm guitar, however a good starting point is to set the dry/wet mix somewhere between 5 and 10% and work from there.

If the reverb plugin features adjustable pre-delay time then this can be adjusted to position the guitar either forward or backwards, that is closer or further away, in the mix. The longer the pre-delay time, the longer it takes for the reverberation echoes to come back at the listener. Imagine recording a guitar in a large, empty hall. If the guitarist is stood in the middle of the hall near the microphone, the pre-delay is the time is the time it takes for echoes to bounce back off the walls to the mic. If the guitarist moves away from the mic the pre-delay time decreases relative to the time it takes direct signal to reach the mic. Our ears and brains are excellent at processing acoustic information allowing us to accurately determine the position of the guitarist within the acoustic space, and its size too, that is the physical dimensions of the hall. It’s essential to bear this in mind when recording if you want your instruments to sound convincingly real. Again, imagine a rock band. Ask yourself where is the singer relative to the bassist, guitarist and drummer? Which sounds arrive first and what are their pre-delay times? Or what about a symphony orchestra? Where are the cellos in relation to the violas in the string section or wind instruments? Or where in the acoustic space is the solo violinist or flautist?

This leads nicely onto the subject of stereo. Now, it seems perfectly sensible and reasonable to assume that an electric guitar played through an amp, like a saxophone or vocalist, is a mono sound source, but it’s not really. The direct sound and echoes from these ‘mono’ instruments take different lengths of time to reach our left and right ears, which effectively makes them stereo. The time delay, along with relative volume levels and frequency content, of the sounds reaching each ear is processed by the brain to yield information which allows us to determine the position of the sound in 3-dimensional space. As you can imagine even a simple shaped hall will produce a complex pattern of reflections and create a complex reverberation field, much more complex reverberation than any algorithmic reverb is capable of.

Stacking reverbs in series, as described earlier, is one method of replicating some of the complexity of real reverberation. Another technique that can be used to add even more realism is to make a duplicate track of your main guitar track, mix in more reverb (but with shorter pre-delay), reduce the volume and then pan it quite far towards either the left or right. This reintroduces that missing directional component the directly recorded guitar lacks, giving it more spacious qualities—to my mind it’s almost as if the process is stretching the 2-dimensional recording space to create the illusion of a third dimension, almost analogous to how an artist, a painter might use perspective and vanishing points when drawing a picture of a street scene on paper.

This technique is not the same as double tracking, which was used to extensively by many rock bands in the 1970s, such as RUSH, Boston and to great extremes by Def Leppard on their ‘Hysteria’ album to layer guitars and make them sound bigger. But the process being described here is more subtle as the duplicate guitar track is considerably lower in volume level than the main track, typically over 20dB down. There are VST plugins available that can create this directional effect (The ‘Haas effect’ described in Helmut Haas’s PhD thesis in 1949) however, like the much overused ‘chorus’ effect, they often sound contrived and somewhat artificial, whereas the duplicate track technique sounds more natural and realistic.

One final point, without this duplicate guitar track, the sound of the guitar can be perceived as ‘flat’ or ‘distant’. Another way of describing this might be to say the guitar tone subjectively lacks immediacy or presence. The usual approach is to attempt to remedy this by boosting the highs with tone controls or an equaliser, however, although conventional wisdom tells us this should work to improve clarity, the guitar still sounds as if sitting back in the mix, what’s really required here is the directional information of the duplicate track technique described above.

Tone, Feel and Performance

It can take a fair amount of time to dial-in the reverb, eq and compression settings, however once they are, the resulting tones can be quite spectacular. In fact, there’s no reason at all why the sound quality of directly recorded guitar should not be comparable with that of an instrument recorded with a high quality microphone and tube amp. There is just one important proviso though: there’s more to guitar tone than just the sound, there’s also the ‘feel’, or perhaps ‘experience’ might be a better way of describing it. Monitoring directly recorded guitar over headphones isn’t the same thing as hearing (and feeling) a loudspeaker in a tube amp physically moving the air in a room. It’s a completely different animal and all the post-processing described above will never make it the same.

What this means in real money is that the instrument just doesn’t ‘play’ or ‘feel’ right and string bends, vibrato, playing fluidity can suffer resulting in a negative impact on the recorded performance. Additionally there’s another component missing from a directly recorded guitar: the sympathetic vibration of the guitar strings that occurs at even moderate volume levels. This feedback effect has been pushed to the limits by many rock guitarists including Alex Lifeson, Mark Knopfler and Gary Moore, for example his guitar solo in ‘Parisienne Walkways’ where he creates an infinite sustain effect. What’s happening here is that the sound waves from the speaker hit the strings and cause them to vibrate and feed electrical signal back into the input of the amp. At extreme high gains and volume levels this results in self-oscillation and squealing sounds, however at lower levels it has the effect of increasing sustain and making the guitar more playable. This effect is totally absent when recording direct without an amp.

And strings aren’t the only mechanism picking up external sound and feeding it back into the guitar amp as an electrical signal. All tubes exhibit ‘microphony’, that is they’re sensitive to external vibration to a greater or lesser extent, and will therefore also introduce sustain, and depth, richness and dimension, into the guitar sound too. Despite what the marketeers might have us believe, it’s not possible simulate this non-linear effect using modern guitar gadgetry, in short, there are no VST plugins or $2000 digital boxes of tricks that can replicate the natural sustain of tubes in a real guitar/amplifier/speaker rig contribute.

There is a nice and simple method of capturing the tone, feel and performance of playing through a real tube amp when recording direct with the Blackbird tube preamp though. This is achieved by taking a spur from the Blackbird’s output to a guitar amp whilst simultaneously recording from the Blackbird’s transformer isolated balanced output. This way you’re still hearing (experiencing) the sound of the guitar through the amp loudspeaker and that euphonic sustain and depth imparted by the strings and tubes singing along with amplified guitar sound. Being electrically isolated, the transformer output ensures there’s no possibility of earth loop hum and adds some of the transformer’s colouration into the recorded tone. There’s also a mild -6dB/oct low-pass filter on the transformer output with a -3dB point at about 6KHz. This ‘conditions’ the direct signal to ensure the best possible tone is captured direct to DAW. Using this approach gives all the advantages of direct recording and all the advantages of playing through a real amp too—you can have your cake and eat it.

Well that just about wraps this article up. It’s more wordy than I intended, simply because there are so many facets to recording guitar—guitar tone really is rocket science! And, despite being so long, this article is by no means exhaustive—I’ve undoubtedly left something out, however I reckon most of the tricks and techniques we used to record our Blackbird demo sound clips have been covered here. You can check them out on the Effectrode sound samples page. The important thing to take away is that you’ll be able obtain outstanding guitar sounds with the Blackbird through a tube, or solid-state, guitar amp and directly to DAW with a little tweaking and, like anything in life, the end results will be directly proportional to the time and effort spent. Anyway thank you for reading my article and I hope you’ve found it interesting and useful.

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Everything You Need To Know About Playing And Recording With The ‘Blackbird’ Vacuum Tube Preamp