I’m sure every sound engineer has been there – sat in the studio control room, seeing time tick away as the guitarist just can’t get that ‘perfect’ take for the track. Maybe the guitarist want’s to play live with the band, but his amp is too loud in the room and spills too much into the other mics?

Well – having been frustrated by both recently, I decided the time to start reamping was here.

It first came about from working with an extremely talented guitarist who would just regularly become frustrated in the studio trying to nail his complicated riffs. Adding time pressure and financial pressure into the mix could make for a particularly frustrating experience. To remedy this, I recommended that we tried a Radial reamping box to allow the guitarist to record at home through a DI, and then try and capture the magic sound from the amp back in the studio. For this particular project, drums were already tracked – so there was no effort for people to all play in one room, so multi tracking was always necessary.

The results were superb. Not only did the guitarist get to spend most of his time at home perfecting the takes without time or money worries – we had a long time where we could discuss ways to improve the guitar track with over dubs and lead lines, as well as spend longer in the studio making sure we could capture the perfect tone, and try different pedal combinations.

Reamping boxes are now added to my collection as a total essential, for sure. It’s also made me change how I record the electric guitar. Before I was always sure of my opinion that the amp tone should be taken as gospel, and no need to take a DI line as well – however now, even if I am recording a guitar through an amp live in the studio – I’ll religiously take a DI line to increase the possibilities further in the mixing stage. With reamping I can stack up tones and create an awesome thick and fat sound for my electric guitars. I know some people love the idea to commit straight away with tone, however for me – this really adds additional possibilities to create the perfect tone, and it’s something I won’t be able to do without any more!

P.S. Shop around! There are more options available than just the Radial box – although this is the market leader. For Example, ART make an awesome solution which is a little bit cheaper