RedSGShredder

Reamping is a recording technique in which you record a dry, unprocessed signal to be modified non-destructively. Imagine recording a song using a Mesa Boogie style amp for your guitar tone, and later, you change your mind and decide to use a Soldano model. You would have to rerecord your entire track.

With reamping, you record just the raw, unprocessed signal once, and then apply the amp tones separately as an effect. This way, you can record once, and change the tone all you want without having to rerecord your tracks over and over.

If you use a Pod device like me, Line 6 provides software that you can install as a plugin to your DAW called Pod Farm. If you have a Line 6 device that can use tones from Pod X3 Live, you can download and use my tones here.

Pod Farm

Note, you will have to record your tracks very cleanly because certain subtleties will be more audible using different amps and tones. Also, don’t record the dry signal without monitoring. You should use a starting point for your monitoring tone so that it makes it easier to hear what the finished product will sound like. It doesn’t have to be final, because you can change it later.

Tutorial

Assuming you’ve installed the necessary software for your digital device and it’s matching plugin, you are ready to get started. In my case, it would be the Pod X3 Live and Pod Farm, respectively. Read the documentation of your device to find out how to do this step.

At this point, your guitar should be be completely dry and unprocessed. You are essentially using your device as a digital recording interface.

Here’s a simple riff recorded without any processing. This is not the finished product.

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Next, you can select a basic tone in your DAW using your plugin. Once again, in my case, it’s Pod Farm. This is the rhythm tone I used for a few of my original recordings.

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Now, you can change your tone all you want. Here’s another example I’ve reamped with a Soldano style model amp. This is the tone I used on the Careworn mp3s.

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You can do this as much as you want. Here’s a reamp using my own lead tone. It’s very similar to the previous tone but it has some delay and reverb.

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Conclusion

The main point is that I only had to record this guitar track once. I can spend all the time I want to developing tones or trying out other people’s tones rather than having to rerecord the track every single time.

As always, there is a trade off. Recording using these techniques takes a lot of processing power and memory from your computer.