[Bar Rose]

Hi Dana,

Thank you for the detailed and super-helpful insight – I’ll stick with the Apollo for now.

Following your advice, I’m looking to add a hardware channel strip next and I’m leaning toward getting my own UA 6176.

For a vocals-and-guitars–focused setup, would you consider it essential, or are there other strips you’d recommend instead?

On another note, your “drive the pre, ride the output” note was a gem! I’d overlooked how much the 1176 side can do as a post-drive trim, and honestly have been avoiding using it. It’s a bit of a mystery to me, and I’m not sure how to use the 1176 on vocal & guitar recordings.

Love to hear your thoughts / tips about this piece of machinery and unravel its mystery 🙂

From what I could peice together, I’m thinking of two gain-staging approaches (with and without compression) for vocals and guitars in mind:

A) Keep the 1176 at 1:1 and use its Output to set level while pushing the 610 for color.

B) Apply light compression: set 4:1, aim for ~1-3 dB of GR, then trim with the compressor’s Output.

What do you think?

Thanks so much!

[Bar Rose]

Very cool and clearly put.. I’ll definitely keep these guidelines in mind when working in my studio

Thank you Dana!

[Bar Rose]

Hey Jesse!

Thanks a lot, sounds like a great place to be listening from.

I wish I’d written the settings down before I messed with them again (trying to get better at that now), but the chain was my Gibson SG bass going into the 6176 with a bit of saturation — nothing too heavy, just enough grit to give it some warmth. Following Dana’s advice, I was already compressing the signal with the 6176 by a few dB before it went into the DAW.

glad you liked it!

[Bar Rose]

Hey Dana glad you liked it!

The owner of the 6176 has surprisingly not followed up on his request to get it back, so in the meantime I’ll be enjoying this beautiful piece of gear

This thread really helped me understand how to color and compress my recordings. It got me thinking about how saturation affects different instruments — some might actually sound nicer without that extra color, keeping them more neutral. With acoustic guitars I find myself not wanting to oversaturate them.

I’m curious to hear what other Protégé folks prefer when it comes to instruments and saturation. Maybe I’m overgeneralizing, and it’s just the particular type of color that the 6176 gives that doesn’t fit every instrument — but it definitely got me thinking that some things just want to be recorded neutrally or maybe naturally.

[Bar Rose]

Thank you, Paul!

I have to admit I was tempted to lay down vocals — looks like I’ll be uploading a version of this no-longer-instrumental instrumental to Mix Protégé soon. 😄

[Bar Rose]

Hey Dana,

As I was recording this instrumental, the meter was living in the red while Sharon was on electric – felt like a bit of an outlaw 🙂

I also used the UAD compressor to tame the bass peaks – what a ball that was, I love how it helps control the track dynamically.

By the way, I’ve been using a few tricks from your thread with Paul about ducking in Pro-Q4 and got tempted to apply it almost everywhere – ducking the reverb, the bass under the kick, you name it. Am I getting too trigger-happy with it? Any downsides or alternative approaches you’d suggest?

Side note – this instrumental is my first time using the Behringer LM Drum, which was surprisingly fun. I’m actually considering picking up either their take on the 6176 or their Neve-style dual preamp console – looks like I have to return my 6176 loaner.

I’d love to hear your general thoughts on these kinds of lower-cost recreations of high-end gear – what do you think of that approach in general?

There’s no ending to this instrumental yet since I still have to write the next part!

instrumental-uad.mp3 4 MB MP3 - Click to view

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