Rent It, Borrow it, or Bring it: Getting your instruments session-ready
Inside the Studio · Round Table Recording Company Blog
There is a conversation we have almost every week. An artist books a session, shows up excited, opens a case, and the guitar inside has not been restrung since last summer. Or the drummer arrives with heads that have been beaten flat over two years of rehearsals. The session does not fall apart, but the first ninety minutes go to solving problems that did not need to exist.
Close microphones are unforgiving. They reveal tuning inconsistencies that nobody notices on a stage. Here is how to walk in ready.
What Instruments Does Round Table Recording Company Provide?
We keep a PDP five-piece drum kit in the building, available to rent for your session. It is a quality kit that records well across a wide range of material, from singer-songwriter and indie to pop, soul, country, and straight-ahead rock. Ask us for current rental pricing when you book.
Two things to know about it. First, cymbals are not included. Cymbals are deeply personal to a drummer and they take a beating, so bring your own. Second, if you are making a heavier record, metal, hardcore, or hard rock where the kick and toms need to hit with a specific aggression, this is not the right kit for that. Bring yours, and we will make it sound like you.
Also, our Piano Room features a Yamaha C7 Grand Piano, offering a rich, professional acoustic sound for recording, songwriting, and production. The piano is included with the price of booking Studio A, giving clients easy access to a high-quality grand piano without needing to book an additional space.
For everything else, ask before you assume. Equipment varies from studio to studio, and the worst time to discover a room does not have the thing you need is the morning of your session. Call ahead, tell us what you are making, and we will tell you exactly what to pack.
Why Does Instrument Prep Matter More Than Gear Selection?
Because no preamp, high quality outboard gear, or state of the art audio console fixes a poorly set up instrument. Engineers who have spent years doing this say it plainly: an out of tune, poorly intonated guitar will hurt a session far worse than any microphone, preamp, or converter decision.
The logic holds for every instrument. A great microphone on a dead drum head captures a dead drum head with beautiful clarity. The prep is not the boring part before the real work. It is the part that determines what the real work has to work with.
How Should You Prep a Guitar for Recording?
Start with a setup. If your guitar has not been to a tech in a year, take it in before the session. Intonation, action, fret condition, and neck relief all affect whether the instrument plays in tune across the whole fretboard, and close-miked recording exposes every bit of it.
Change strings, but not the morning of. Fresh strings intonate far more reliably than old ones, because dead strings go false and play out of tune with themselves. But brand new strings will not hold pitch. Change them three to seven days out, or the day before with a few hours of playing to stretch them in.
A few details that cost nothing and save takes:
Tune up to the note, not down to it. Strings settle more stably when brought up to pitch. If you overshoot, drop below and come back up.
Retune before every take, or at minimum before every layer. When you stack four rhythm tracks each a few cents off, the errors multiply and the wall of sound smears. Two perfectly tuned tracks beat four slightly sour ones.
Hunt down rattles. Loose screws, bridge pieces, tremolo arms, and strap buttons will ruin an otherwise perfect take.
Bring backups. Spare strings, spare cables, spare fuses and preamp tubes if you are bringing an amp. These are the parts that fail.
One exception worth naming: fresh strings are not always the answer. If you are chasing a warmer, duller, vintage-soul tone, older strings may be exactly right. Talk to your engineer about the sound you want before you restring out of habit.
How Should You Prep a Drum Kit for Recording?
Fresh heads, bedded in. Drum heads account for roughly 80 percent of a drum's sound, which makes this the single highest-leverage thing a drummer can do. But brand new heads stretch and drift, so the professional approach is to fit them the night before, tension them, leave them overnight, then loosen and retune from scratch the next day. A rehearsal on the new heads the day before works just as well.
Then tune for the room and the song. Recording generally favors medium-character tuning with minimal muffling, which is different from how most kits are set up for live playing. Check every lug with a drum tuner, because even tension matters enormously under close microphones.
Finally, silence the kit's own noise:
Tape or remove rattling hardware. Cymbal wing nuts, hi-hat clutches, and snare strainers all vibrate sympathetically and end up in your overheads.
Check that floor tom legs are not pressing against the shell, which kills sustain.
Play the full kit and listen for sympathetic resonance between toms and snare before the session starts.
Work on consistency. Striking the center of the head produces the best tone, and inconsistent placement gives you some weak hits and some huge ones. That is nearly impossible to fix without replacing the entire stem with samples.
Should You Borrow an Instrument for Your Session?
Generally, no. It is a common instinct, your friend has a nicer guitar than yours, so you borrow it for the session. Two problems come with it.
The first is setup. A borrowed instrument is set up for the person who owns it, if it is set up at all. Their string gauge, their action, their neck relief, their playing style. It may not have seen a tech in years. You are inheriting someone else's compromises without knowing what they are.
The second is feel, and it matters more. You know your instrument. You know where it fights you and where it sings. In a session, that familiarity is what lets you stop thinking about the instrument and focus on the performance. An unfamiliar neck means part of your attention goes to navigation instead of music, and that shows up in the take.
The better version of this idea is to borrow early. If you genuinely want a different instrument on the record, get it weeks ahead, have it set up, and play it until it feels like yours. Borrowing something Thursday for a Saturday session is not an upgrade.
Worth noting that this cuts the other way too. Engineers at established studios report that it is common for guitarists to end up abandoning their own instruments mid-session in favor of a studio guitar, purely because of setup and maintenance problems. Nobody plans for that. It just happens when the prep was skipped.
What If Your Instrument Is Not Session-Ready?
You have real options, and they are not consolation prizes.
For guitar and bass, we capture a clean DI alongside whatever else we are recording. That DI is an unprocessed snapshot of your performance, and it lets us reamp later, sending the recorded signal back out through a different amp, different pedals, or an amp simulator during mixing. The performance stays exactly as you played it while the tone stays completely open. It also means a decision you make about amp settings at 2pm is not permanent.
For keys and drums, virtual instruments have become genuinely good and are often free. A well-programmed virtual piano or drum library will outperform a poorly maintained real instrument recorded badly, every time. This is not settling. It is choosing the tool that serves the song.
The point of both is the same: your performance is the thing that cannot be recreated later. Tone can be. When the gear is not cooperating, we protect the performance first and solve tone afterward.
Bring This Up Before You Book
The easiest way to avoid all of this is a short conversation. Tell us what you are recording, what you are bringing, and what sound you are chasing. We will tell you what is already in the room, what you need to bring, and what is worth getting looked at before you arrive.
Planning a session? Contact us today to tell us more about your project, book your first session, or tour the studio at 6345 Carrollton Ave in the Broad Ripple Arts District of Indianapolis.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does the studio drum kit include cymbals?
No. Cymbals are personal to each drummer and wear differently with use, so bring your own. The PDP five-piece shells, hardware, and kick pedal are available to rent for your session, and we can quote the rental when you book.
Is the house kit right for heavy music?
It records beautifully across most styles, but for metal, hardcore, or hard rock it is not the ideal choice. If that is your record, bring your own kit and we will get the sound you are after.
How far in advance should I change strings or heads?
Guitar strings, three to seven days before, or the day before with a few hours of playing to settle them. Drum heads, the night before, tensioned and left to stretch overnight, then retuned the next day.
Can I use your guitar if mine is not in good shape?
Not usually. Ask us when you book and we will tell you what is available. That said, a familiar instrument you have prepped will almost always serve you better than an unfamiliar one that happens to be nicer.
What is reamping and why would I want it?
Reamping sends a clean recorded guitar track back out through an amp or pedals after the fact, so tone decisions happen during mixing instead of during tracking. Your performance is preserved exactly while the sound stays adjustable.
Are virtual instruments a downgrade from real ones?
Not anymore. Modern virtual pianos, strings, and drum libraries are excellent and frequently free. A well-programmed virtual instrument beats a poorly maintained real one, and the right choice depends on what the song needs.
Sources: Sound on Sound, Optimizing Electric Guitars For The Studio; Sound on Sound, Engineer's Guide To Tuning and Damping Drums; Audient, How To Prepare Yourself and Your Drum Kit For Recording (2021); MusicRadar, How to prep your drum kit for a recording session; DRUM! Magazine, Best Drum Heads For Recording (2021); Guitar.com, Five Tips For Your Next Guitar Recording Session (February 2026); Violet Recording, How to Tune a Guitar for Recording (2026); Drum-Tuning.com, Recording Drums in a Studio: Mic Placement and Tuning (June 2026); Radial Engineering, How to Reamp for a Perfect Tone; Perfect Circuit, Studio Concepts: What is Reamping?
Round Table Recording Company · Indianapolis, Indiana · www.thertrc.com