Okay, so here's my take on this tune.
I have uploaded two versions of this since I was doing a little experimenting at the same time. The first is your normal, tasteful mix. The second was me taking a cue from early '80s Priest and making the reverb part of the overall sound so that one has it *really* laid on. Too bad I couldn't find a decent chorus plugin to use on the guitar tracks. All I have are things that want to be flangers first and that's not gonna do for that sound. (I finally settled on a 12ms delay ahead of a fairly shallow chorus effect and that got me a lot closer. Vocals are almost certainly 3-5 dB too hot. I wasn't being expecially particular for this version. I debated on running the guitars through a valve driver but decided against it. Maybe that's version #3.
)
Challenges I saw in this mix:
When you go to listen to the raw tracks, you will hear what appears to be a delay encoded onto the tape of a little over a second. The more astute among you will recognize this t'ain't so. What has occurred here is a product of long term storage of magnetic tape. One layer on the reel has bled into the next layer, literally imprinting its own magnetic signature on the layer of tape in contact with it, thus the apparent delay. I didn't want to try to sterilize this recording but tried to preserve a certain amount of the tape hiss and try to use the leakage to my advantage. The "storage delay" made getting the right ambiance hard.
That hammond kept getting in my way. I wanted to bring it through the mix but it was hard to keep it from smearing the sound all over the place because of the nature of the hammond sound. What I finally ended up doing was running it through two compressors in series, one to compress and even out the sustain and the other to limit the peaks and boost the level back up. Following this with a bit of judicious EQ seemed to put it where it belonged.
Bass buildup was a problem for me, especially on the version with the massive reverb. Took forever to get it to where I was at least satisfied with it. 150 hz and ~300hz were the problem points.
The vocal line to me was a little thin. It sounds like this is not the same singer as in their other track (which is unfortunate since that guy had a great voice). So to fatten it up and sweeten it, I applied a delay of 85ms, just on the edge of where you can actually hear the delay, about 6db down from the VOX fader and then put both of them through a common reverb processor, then adding about 2dB presence boost centered at 4kHz. I think it worked out pretty well. (Oh, and lets not forget the need to run him through a deesser before all this.)
Balancing the guitars and the hammond was a real challenge. I didn't really want to but had to compress both guitars a decent amount. Then I had to figure out how to get them to play nice together. I'd move a fader that sounded a little low +0.2 dB and then find it was high. At +0.1 dB it seemed to fit but I couldn't just leave it here and had to vary fader levels throughout the number to keep them in balance. The solo was a particular hell since the attack of the guitar in that frequency range just pounded the hammond into the dust and then came at you like a knife when it reached the speakers.
Anyway, that's my mix. Let me know what you think!
I have uploaded two versions of this since I was doing a little experimenting at the same time. The first is your normal, tasteful mix. The second was me taking a cue from early '80s Priest and making the reverb part of the overall sound so that one has it *really* laid on. Too bad I couldn't find a decent chorus plugin to use on the guitar tracks. All I have are things that want to be flangers first and that's not gonna do for that sound. (I finally settled on a 12ms delay ahead of a fairly shallow chorus effect and that got me a lot closer. Vocals are almost certainly 3-5 dB too hot. I wasn't being expecially particular for this version. I debated on running the guitars through a valve driver but decided against it. Maybe that's version #3.
)Challenges I saw in this mix:
When you go to listen to the raw tracks, you will hear what appears to be a delay encoded onto the tape of a little over a second. The more astute among you will recognize this t'ain't so. What has occurred here is a product of long term storage of magnetic tape. One layer on the reel has bled into the next layer, literally imprinting its own magnetic signature on the layer of tape in contact with it, thus the apparent delay. I didn't want to try to sterilize this recording but tried to preserve a certain amount of the tape hiss and try to use the leakage to my advantage. The "storage delay" made getting the right ambiance hard.
That hammond kept getting in my way. I wanted to bring it through the mix but it was hard to keep it from smearing the sound all over the place because of the nature of the hammond sound. What I finally ended up doing was running it through two compressors in series, one to compress and even out the sustain and the other to limit the peaks and boost the level back up. Following this with a bit of judicious EQ seemed to put it where it belonged.
Bass buildup was a problem for me, especially on the version with the massive reverb. Took forever to get it to where I was at least satisfied with it. 150 hz and ~300hz were the problem points.
The vocal line to me was a little thin. It sounds like this is not the same singer as in their other track (which is unfortunate since that guy had a great voice). So to fatten it up and sweeten it, I applied a delay of 85ms, just on the edge of where you can actually hear the delay, about 6db down from the VOX fader and then put both of them through a common reverb processor, then adding about 2dB presence boost centered at 4kHz. I think it worked out pretty well. (Oh, and lets not forget the need to run him through a deesser before all this.)
Balancing the guitars and the hammond was a real challenge. I didn't really want to but had to compress both guitars a decent amount. Then I had to figure out how to get them to play nice together. I'd move a fader that sounded a little low +0.2 dB and then find it was high. At +0.1 dB it seemed to fit but I couldn't just leave it here and had to vary fader levels throughout the number to keep them in balance. The solo was a particular hell since the attack of the guitar in that frequency range just pounded the hammond into the dust and then came at you like a knife when it reached the speakers.
Anyway, that's my mix. Let me know what you think!
Old West Audio