A quick work out on a framework of Simon Philips drums in Groove Agent 5 and recording guitar through an UA Ox. A bit dirty and gristly and uncouth.
(and a slightly tweaked mix messing about with the snare and drums volume: Stream Mechanically Recovered (slight Remix) by steve.idiot | Listen online for free on SoundCloud)
Steve.
Nice song! For me the guitars are sounding awesome, the bass is just okay but this snare is annoying.
Hey Steve, what a player! Yngwie rushed home to practice some more! Which guitar was that?
I thought the drums sounded ok, just maybe a little more variety is all, and I’d maybe compress the snare a little more, if that was the feedback you were requesting…
Thanks! I have to say, the Ox is hideously expensive but it is a thing of wonder when it comes to realistic tones, variety of tones and ease of recording guitars. Thanks for the comments on the snare; I am just as likely to make things worse as I am to improve things by messing about with drum sounds but it’s good to have other ears - I’m going to have another go at the kit.
Steve.
Haha! Hey Leon, thanks very much for your kind comments - I was meant to be learning about 2 5 1 changes but there’s only so much concentration for learning I can manage at one time so it was time to make a loud noise. I decided to splash out on an Ox and it makes it so easy to crank things up and keep volumes down.
The guitars are all my Les Paul custom lite (I think it’s called) - thinner and cheaper than the full fat custom. I remember you’d put a Stetsbar on your Les Paul Studio; I had done the same with my Washburn HB35. I decided to get a Duesenberg Les Term II and put it on this custom lite. It’s pretty good: it’s not as buttery smooth as the Stetsbar but it’s a third of the price and it fits even easier than the Stetsbar. Absolutely fine for gentle warbles. The thinner sound towards the end is the rhythm pickup through a fully open wah pedal and then back to the treble pickup right at the end while varying the wah.
Thanks for the drum comments; mixing is not an art that comes naturally to me but I’m going to play about with compressing and eq’ing the snare and see what happens.
Steve.
Hey Steve, lately only been playing my old Strat, but the sound you’re getting encourages me to go back to my LP! Well, what a luxury to switch from time to time!
Luxury indeed, Leon, I agree with you. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to play different guitars now. I’ve been playing the Les Paul for a little while but picked up my Strat last night having read your post - twangy heaven again.
Steve.
Coincidentally, yesterday I got out the LP, changed the strings, gave it a good wipe-down, and revisited the setup. It’s playing quite smoothly, and even staying in tune a bit, so I’m planning to use it!
Lovely beefy guitar and great no nonsense playing, yes the snare is grabbing attention a bit . with the ringing kits i try find the tuning of the kit pieces and mess about with the tuning and try get each kit piece tuned to the root chord of the tune ,sometimes if you put some distortion on the snare just has an anylizing tool you can hear the tuning better and can then determine how to retune the kit piece . i used to play with a drummer who sounded like bonham he used to tune is kit wonderful.i find the root ,third and five notes of the chord best i have heard bad company tune the snare to a flat 7 kind of a blues note thing for a song .
Thanks very much polgara for your meat-related comments, much appreciated!
That’s a fascinating insight into drum and snare tunings - genius. I’ll have a play around again this week.
Steve.
your welcome , same goes for all the kit , toms blend great when tuned and same goes for the kick ,if the distortion reveals out of tune overtones you can eq them out so long as you don`t lose too much . you begin to notice how kits are tuned to pop records on the radio and wot not .
if i became a vegetarian(like i should) and dropped the descriptive reference beefy from sound, wonder if i`d replace it with weedy. 
Hendrix sounded weedy at times if you get what i mean
Don’t rule out ‘thick with oaty goodness’, or ‘like a fat lentil bake’ 
ha ha great “chops”
This tune was ultra cool 
Cheers
Tor-Bjarne
Thanks very much Tor-Bjarne for the listen!
Steve.
a ‘bit’ dirty?
that’s some playing ! … hope you live a bit rural concerning sound levels practicing this one>
Very energetic and cool track.
Haha! Thanks Peter; in fact it’s very easy to play this quietly because I can channel the loud guitar through my new favourite toy, the Ox. And yes, this is embarrassingly dirty and unrefined, especially compared to the pastoral beauty of your ambient pieces. Thanks very much for the listen; it would be nice to something collaborative with you again some time maybe this year? (A mix between the pastoral sublime and the mechanically recovered ridiculous)
Steve.