Hello everybody,

After reading various posts on this site about my favourite instrument, I finally decided to write and ask all of you for help, because I haven't been able to find all the answers I need by myself.

I'm a stick player based in Belgium, and I am right now studying sound engineering. As an end of studies document, I would like to write about the different ways of recording the Stick.
If some of you could take a few minutes to answer a few questions about the stick (or give me some useful input), that would be a great help.

First of all, does any of you know where I could find data about the different pickup options of the stick? I found a technical data sheet about the PASV-4 but for the others (in particular the original stickup), I couldn't find anything...

Also, I would be very interested to know how you record your stick: directly into the computer, with an amp (which amps), mics (which ones), guitar rig or multi-effects, etc... and which effects you routinely use: kind of compression, reverb, eq...

Well, thanks very much to all of you who will take a few minutes of their time to answer... Of course, I'll keep stickist posted as to how things go with this work.

Thanks in advance for your valuable help,

Pascale

Hi Pascale,

I use a Rane SP13® Preamp (+4db Mic-Level Balanced TRS) or a StepAbout® Preamp (-10db Instrument-Level Balanced TRS). From there I go into a Motu 828 mkII® Audio Interface (Mic/Instrument Inputs) and via Firewire into an iMac with Logic Studio® 9. I use a DBX 160A® on each Side of the Stick (Melody & Bass) Threshold +5d and Ratio 4:1. You have to know, that the Chapman Stick® is a extremely sensitive and dynamic instrument like Electric Bass with a lot of overtones. I don't use any virtual amps or cabs. For Ambience I add parallel a Lexicon MPX1® (Mostly the preset "Small Club"). I record on 3 Tracks: 1 Mono Melody (DBX160A®), 1 Mono Bass (DBX160A®) and 1 Stereo (Lexicon MPX1®).

Check out http://www.stick.com and http://www.richter-ee.de/ for further information and/or write an Email to Emmett Chapman, Greg Howard and Andreas Richter.

Any more Questions? Go ahead - You're welcome.

All the best for your project

Hi Pascale,

I haven't really recorded the Stick sofar, but most likely I will start doing this with my POD X3 and Mac.
And ehm, if you want to actually record Stick, I live in the south of the Netherlands, we could maybe arrange something I have a 10-string with the stickup.

Cheers,
Bas.

Stick -> Alembic F-2B tube preamp -> Motu 828 Mk II soundcard -> Logic Pro 8

10 string polycarb- sansamp bass driver di (bass side) an aguilar db924 preamp ( melody side)- 2 hartke lh500 amps into laney 1x15 cabinet and a laney 4x10 cabinet. thats my live rig

my studio rig ..... 10 string polycarb- Line6 toneport ux8- uses pod farm 2 platinum edition where i have a duel channel set up... in pod farm i have been exploring the uses of effects on the stick. i am a huge fan of the various reverbs, delays, and slight distortions. out of the Ux8 and into my Hartke setup

Darren/gnat

Hi Pascale,

for my recordings I use the following: Stick (with Stickup) ---> TheMMamp preamp (basically a StepAbout without routing matrix and tone controls) --> Line6 M13 multieffects unit --> Roger Linn Adrenalinn (filters and amp simulation) --> Roland VS-880 EX (a stand-alone digital recorder).

For some sounds I take a SansAmp Bass Driver DI instead of the effects units, but I always have the TheMMamp in front of everything.

I use all kinds of effects. Compression from subtle to heavy, all kinds of filters from the Adrenalinn, Distortion, Phasers, Flangers, Tremolos, you name it.

If I want a more acoustic, "un-processed" sound, I use slight compression, EQ and reverb from the Roland Recorder.

I hope that helps! Best wishes for your paper!

Both sides lined directly into an RME Fireface400 computer audio interface. I have tried other AD converters but the RME sounds the best to me. The rest is simply traditional mixing technique applied in software. Here's a video that gives an ok sound example
http://www.perboysen.com/archives/718

When that was recorded I was still using light guage strings (being kind of Stick beginner) but now I have moved on to medium guage that I think sounds better.

I typically run the Stick into a Rane SP13 preamp. The SP13 then goes to an M-Audio Profire2626 firewire interface. This is usually connected to my MSI GT725 laptop running windows XP SP3. Once it is into the computer I have several options as to what I want to do. I'll typically run it into SAC (Software Audio Console) by RML labs which is a digital mixer on par with the big Yamaha/Digico digital boards, without the hardware. Each side of the Stick goes to it's own channel where I run it thru Guitar Rig, or other processing. I also have the midi pickup on the melody side of the Stick connected to a Roland GI-20 which I feed into another channel in SAC which is loaded with a VSTi (Z3ta, Korg M1, Absynth, etc.)

SAC works in parallel with SawStudio (another RML product) which I can use to record all channels in SAC (can go to 72 if you have the interface and processing power)

An alternate system I use is instead of going into SAC I'll go directly to Native Instruments KORE 2. I have different plugins in the different slots. This doesn't allow me the recording options that the first system does but it handles plugins better..

Dave