Apr 23, 2009 07:24 pm There's a pretty good article under the TIPS tab that I used before and it helped a lot.
Recording Guitar
Posted on Apr 23, 2009 06:18 pm
bassguitar1121
Member Since: Nov 24, 2008
Hey guys. Studio has been going well since I had my MBox2 fixed. Quick question.
When recording guitar live with two mics into a mixer and then into my mbox 2, where should I be placing my shure sm 57's. I have two of them as well as a concensor mic. I have tried messing with mic placement and it always seems to sounds too echoey. Any suggestions as to where the one or two mics should be placed in front of the amp when recording clean and distorted guitar?
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Apr 23, 2009 07:24 pm There's a pretty good article under the TIPS tab that I used before and it helped a lot.
Apr 23, 2009 08:16 pm there seems not to be a perfect place for the mic.
to get it right though, put yer mic on the stand but dont tighten the bottom part of it so you can swing it around.
aim yer 57 at the centre of the cone and tilt in inwards a bit, so its on about a 35ish dgree angle. make sure the mic is close to the grill. almost on it. you can pull it back a bit if ya want depends on what you thinks works better.
you basicly either need someone to swing the mic from left to right slowly whilst wearing headphones and playing yer git, till you hear it somewhere you like it. then tighten up the stand.
biggest point of all is, get the sound exactly how you want it on the amp before you record. if you are doing multiple tracks, use a diferent guitar or different speaker on the box with different settings to prevent phasing. you can also move the mic position for this.
if you are doing 2 seperate tracks, one panned Left and one right, then i would
change the settings somehow after doing those two.
you basicly dont want them phasing each other out. doubling up two of the same, in the same speaker will do that.
same using 2 mics. i would just stick to one myself. especially if youre gonna layer tracks.
Apr 24, 2009 06:00 am I dont see the need for the second mic. It's probably where you are getting all the extra reverberation from. If you are recording a 4x12, try using the bottom right speaker, get right up close to it, maybe just so its not touching the mesh/grill , and start there. It helps a lot to monitor and maybe even get a friend to help, so you can listen, and he/she could adjust the position.
Apr 24, 2009 06:32 am SM57's are used a few ways, one of the most common is straight up to the grill, facinf straight into the cone, dead center, another is straight in, half way between dead center and the end of the cone...a third is laying flat against the grill with the mic hanging at dead center of the cone.
The condenser, back a couple/few feet to get some depth, or ambiance to the sound.
Apr 24, 2009 06:46 am if you can get a good tight ambient positon it can make it sound so much fatter.
really gotta mess wid it though. i mainly found with distorted stuff, it made it too mushy for tight tech stuff.
but fatt chords is sweet.
Apr 24, 2009 10:11 am I'm not much of a fan of using multiple SM57s on a single guitar amp. It's not useless or anything but I prefer to use an SM57 and a condensor mic.
The "traditional" setup (if there is such a thing) is to have an SM57 up against the grille and a condensor mic a few feet away. The close mic emphasizes the grit of the distortion and the woof of the speaker cone. The room mic emphasizes the high frequencies, the mid frequencies, the more subtle detail of the cabinet, and most importantly, the reverb and ambience of the room.
2 SM57s might be useful if you're micing both the front and the back of a guitar cab. Or maybe to capture both the brighter tone in the middle of the speaker cone and the woofier bassy tone towards the edge of a speaker cone (in which case, it seems to me that a single SM57 midway between the center and the edge would yield similar if not identical results).
But the benefit of using multiple mics is enhanced when you have 2 mics that emphasize different frequency ranges, so you can use them to form a composite image of what the amp sounds like in the room.
The most important thing to keep in mind when using multiple mics is phase cancellation and comb filtering. Read up on these subjects, and do some searching around the forums. There have been some good discussions in the past about using multiple mics to capture a single sound source.
Apr 24, 2009 01:13 pm Using mutliple mics I can understand phasing but... when using one mic and I record two guitar takes using the same guitar/settings I don't understand why that would cause phasing.
If that was the case then copy/pasting two of the exact same track would phase each other out but they actually get louder in mono, reverse the phase and they dissapear, that leads me to believe there is no phasing.
Now I do change up my settings (not guitars) just because it sounds cool, but I never did it because of phase. I thought phasing was normally caused by sounds arriving at different times to different mics.
This is just my understanding of it, by no means to I claim to be right. Anyone else?
Apr 24, 2009 07:08 pm yeah Capen, if ya do a reverse phase and it disappears, twould suggest its in allready.
mmm, i just started another thread on something very similar, but im not wondering about the same guitar tone repeated over and over in the same speaker, and if it would cause cancellation of some kind?
Apr 24, 2009 08:07 pm I'll just toss this in as well.
The sole purpose's of using multiple mic's on a guitar cab are. To thicken the sound, or add a bit of depth.
Having said that here is the key. using 2 or 3 of the same mic will really not accomplish much, unless they are used in the room and not on the cab.
Different mic's can have a different tone or flavor if you will. Using distinctly different mic's will work much better then using the same or similar mic's.
If your going to do the multi mic thing on a guitar cab I highly suggest using mic's with extreme different character.
My 2 cents worth.
Apr 24, 2009 10:55 pm i would say Noize your contributions are worth a bit more than 2 cents.
Apr 25, 2009 03:22 pm Thanx Deon!
Made my crappy week much better.
Apr 26, 2009 09:08 pm I find that using more than one 57 (or more than one of any mic--I prefer condensers on guitar) can be quite effective, especially with high-gain guitar work.
One technique that I use is to place one of the mics in the center of the cone (up to 4 or 5 inches away from the grill), and the other off to the side a bit. Keep both of them the same distance from the cone to avoid phase cancellation (listen in on headphones while placing to help with this). Record each mic to a separate track, and you can pick your tonal balance later on in the mix. It will give you a much thicker, smoother sound spectrum to work with since it's not zeroing in on just one bit of the speaker. Sometimes if it's a multi-speaker cab, I'll place a third mic on one of the other speakers (same distance but different mic or position), to give me even more to work with.
I've never had success trying to use a dynamic close up and a condenser further back on a high gain guitar--too many phase issues. You might be able to work around that if you time-align the waveforms in your editor, though.
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