outboard warming/saturation/mojo gear tube and tape

Hey everyone, looking for some people to share their joys with me.

After years of being a very in-the-box composer and producer, I've recently, as of the past couple of years, been changing my philosophy/methodology and enjoying using more outboard gear. I'm trying to use less soft synths and more hardsynths. Less Guitarrig, more fender amp and a Royer. You get the picture.

Working on an album at the moment, and I'm sending tracks (mostly drums and Wurlitzer keys) out of logic to a Fulltone tube tape echo, and/or a tube spring reverb. Sometimes with the mix almost at zero, just to get some tube mojo. And I'm beginning to be fond of sending stuff out of logic, to get some electricity in its veins.

I was also looking to grab a portastudio to get some ultra lowfi tape warmth. Anyway, That's the vibe I'm going for.

What's other peoples loves? All price ranges welcome. Tubes Tape. Tricks and gear, and most groovy way of incorporating it into Logic. Simple send, or some other way?

Thanks so much! Excited to hear your ideas.

I like the idea of incorporating outboard gear, especially effect units, for example using the i/o plug-in (or not). The portastudio I'm not so sure off, seems like it would bring more hiss and distortion than any smoothing warm goodness, but depending on what you're working with and what you want, only you know what will ultimately work, so experimenting is key.

I remember a heavy metal producer who was recording and mixing everything in the box but would always have three audio tracks at the bottom of all his productions, that had recordings of different sounding analog tape hiss/white noise. he would carefully blend them in with his mixes to bring that analog tape vibe. It was mixed in so subtly that most regular users wouldn't even notice it was there but budding music producers would generally detect it and immediately conclude that the entire production was made on analog tape, which was kind of his easter egg.

I have personally stopped spending too much time experimenting with outboard analog gear, for lack of time and resources mostly, and also because I tend to find everything I need and want in the box in general. But once in a while, inspiration strikes, or an artist pushes me to do it, and I have fun with running a track through an analog guitar pedal or some other esoteric device. It's generally a lot of fun and brings a different quality to the production, something new.

Thanks David. Yeah, I’m not precious about anything. I could get everything I wanted in the box, and I sort of did that for the last 15 years, but now I just feel my art is going that way now.

That’s a great story about the heavy metal producer. Infact, the portastudio idea was intended for a similar reason, I’d also be a little less subtle with it too.

The other thing is that I’ve got 50-60 amazing guitar pedals that need to be seeing more use.

Thanks for the tip about in/out plug. Any tricks or words of advice with it? Maybe I should get your new book. Is it updated greatly from 4 years ago? That’s the last one I had.

Hey David, any one else checking this, I guess I didn't word my original post so well.

"Warmth" is a pretty subjective term, I guess I was more interested to hear peoples experience with routing stuff to outboard gear, and any tricks and tips that make life easier.

I've run into some organizational issues with timing. For instance on a stereo drum bus, going through 2 channels of eq. Im also running the snare through an outboard compressor. This is all done with the I/O plug in. Some guitars through a space echo etc etc.

I re-record them through the outboard, onto a new track, but sometimes the timing is a hair off, sometimes it's a bit more. I'm sending stems now to collaborator, and I wonder if there's any sharp way, or someone has figured out a good workflow, for orgnanising this process. Or is it simply just straight labour?

Thanks again.

A