Anatomy Of A Clip (VH On Fire - Studio Magic)

[lll]

We've heard the "RAW" tunes (still have to upload what I have; will do in time) and how the tone was "decent" at best.

Thought I'd break down my own clip showing the "studio magic"; step-by-step. This will again prove that Ted & Donn had a huge part in shaping and fine tuning the album tone.

Obviously, my presentation here is ultimately a guesstimate of what they did based on tons of hours of research and tone testing; regardless, you will hear the differences.


This is my old "On Fire" clip I posted a few days ago using the Danelectro Breakdown; although I have tweaked the DAW plugins a little bit (not much, though).

I made 4 short clips (into one long clip) of the intro with my guitar/gear (using ISO backing track) right before Dave starts singing.

...one clip after the other, exact same playing/waveform, each progressively adding more "studio magic" until "final" album tone result.

Each of the 4 clips always has these two plugins on them:

1) Brainworx Limiter True Peak (for final limiting)
2) UAD Ampex ATR-102 Tape


Here are the other plugins used for each of the 4 parts:

1st part: Tone straight into DAW, no iRs

2nd part: The above, plus:

1) Ownhammer Greenback 100% + Ownhammer D120 50% iRs

3rd part: The above, plus:

1) UAD EP-34 Tape Echo (Echoplex) (set to quiet repeat)
2) UAD API Vision Channel Strip (only used for preamp flavor)
3) UAD Pultec MEQ-5 (cut 1.5 dB off 1K)
4) UAD Pultec EQP-1A (add 3dB to 5K, atten 3dB @ 10K)
5) UAD UA 1176LN (~6dB of comp 4:1)
6) UAD Studer A800 Tape

4th part: The above, plus:

1) UAD EMT 140 (panned full R)