Hank Williams III

Used for the guitar on Straight to Hell, as stated in this May 1, 2006 Mix Online interview.

The room where the vocals, guitars and bass were recorded for disc one was a relatively large one, with 15-foot ceilings. While there was no official baffling, Hank III reports that they recorded the vocals and acoustic guitars tucked in a corner. In keeping with the minimalist approach, few microphones were used during those tracking dates and just three kinds: Shure SM7, SM57 and KSM32. Hank III sang into the SM7, used the 57 on his acoustic guitar and kept a KSM32 going at all times to capture room vocal and guitar tracks that were later blended in.

Getting tones from the stand-up bass was a bit of an issue, Hank III says, because there was no controlling the room ambience. That was solved, in part, with Hank III twisting a knob on the D1600, checking the sound as it played on his home stereo system, which includes a Paradigm subwoofer, and then returning to finish the track. “We were trying to keep some of the click of the stand-up bass and trying for it to not sound too scary on the woofy end,” he says. A 57 was placed just above the bridge of the bass, one just below, and then one KSM32 slightly off to one side and another down a hall about 15 feet.

Any other type of instrument — dobro, fiddle, pedal steel — was miked with a 57 and run straight into the D1600. Indeed, other than the mic pre’s that are present in the D1600, no other outboard gear was used on the project.

Used as an ambient mic on Straight to Hell, as stated in this May 1, 2006 Mix Online interview.

The room where the vocals, guitars and bass were recorded for disc one was a relatively large one, with 15-foot ceilings. While there was no official baffling, Hank III reports that they recorded the vocals and acoustic guitars tucked in a corner. In keeping with the minimalist approach, few microphones were used during those tracking dates and just three kinds: Shure SM7, SM57 and KSM32. Hank III sang into the SM7, used the 57 on his acoustic guitar and kept a KSM32 going at all times to capture room vocal and guitar tracks that were later blended in.

Getting tones from the stand-up bass was a bit of an issue, Hank III says, because there was no controlling the room ambience. That was solved, in part, with Hank III twisting a knob on the D1600, checking the sound as it played on his home stereo system, which includes a Paradigm subwoofer, and then returning to finish the track. “We were trying to keep some of the click of the stand-up bass and trying for it to not sound too scary on the woofy end,” he says. A 57 was placed just above the bridge of the bass, one just below, and then one KSM32 slightly off to one side and another down a hall about 15 feet.

Any other type of instrument — dobro, fiddle, pedal steel — was miked with a 57 and run straight into the D1600. Indeed, other than the mic pre’s that are present in the D1600, no other outboard gear was used on the project.

(...) The album is light on effects. “All of the reverb that you hear on the vocals is natural,” Lightman reports. “There is not a drop of digital reverb. There are delays that are very obviously delays, but all that room ambience is the KSM32 that was across the room. That was very carefully blended in. There were three or four tracks on every vocal take, which had to be treated as one take. We locked the tracks together, and all the edits were done together.”

Used for vocals on Straight to Hell, as stated in this May 1, 2006 Mix Online interview.

The room where the vocals, guitars and bass were recorded for disc one was a relatively large one, with 15-foot ceilings. While there was no official baffling, Hank III reports that they recorded the vocals and acoustic guitars tucked in a corner. In keeping with the minimalist approach, few microphones were used during those tracking dates and just three kinds: Shure SM7, SM57 and KSM32. Hank III sang into the SM7, used the 57 on his acoustic guitar and kept a KSM32 going at all times to capture room vocal and guitar tracks that were later blended in.