Recording Guitar- Mic how far off the amp?

[w_]

Micing my Fender Princeton I get a lot of different results varying the Mic position (obviously). Just out of curiosity how far do you guys usually set the Mic off the Amp? 3 inches? Do you give it room to breathe and set it off a foot?
Thanks for any help,
Wes

[deadair]

i usually go right against the grill, btu i see a lot of people suggest further back a few inches. depends on the mic though, is it a 57? a condensor?

[heylow]

Man....

This depends on what I'm going for and what mic I'm using. I generally like to let it breathe a bit but exactly how much depends on what I want to hear.

Say I'm using a 441 or a 57....I may be anywhere from 3 inches off the grill to 6 or 8. I also find I often like to point these mic halfway between the center of the cone and the edge of the speaker with a slight (ever so) axis tilt to get rid of some presence peak.

When I use my Baby Bottle, I'm almost ALWAYS about 11 or 12 inches out and and generally toward the outside of the speaker.

With my M160....it varies...usually 6 or 8 inches out, sometimes 11 or 12, halfway between the center and the edge.

Of course none of this is hard fast rules....just observations of where I tend to be with them. Play a chord, let it ring and move it around (or have someone move it) with phones on and you'll usually hear where it sounds good for what you are looking for. This guitar sound stuff is so subjective....one songs "best tone ever" will be another song's "crappy, muddy, icky" sound.

And keep that amp offa the floor!


heylow

[w_]

Thanks for the help. Yeah, it is a 57, and I too seem to get the best results about 3" to 6". Heylow, as far as the slight tilt, do you tilt away or toward the center of the cone? I'm thinking of getting a AT 4040 for a room mic, though I'm not sure how helpful it would b.
I've been doing tests this afternoon between micing and recording sirect with my Sansamp and I have to say the Sansamp (GT2) sounds very realistic if you pay a lot of attention to the EQ settings which are pretty sensitive.

[soundguy]

wes-

can you wear a pair of headphones and move a mic around in real time in front of the cab? There's really no better way to do it, no matter how you cut it, if you dont listen while you place that mic, its just a good guess at best. Even brand new speakers can sound very different, let alone speakers that have been in an amp for 10-30 years or longer being played to death. If you can move a mic around and listen, you'll KNOW the sound that you'll like the best. Listening in real time becomes even more helpful when yyou get into multi mic arrays on a guitar cab.

good luck

dave

[cgarges]

Dave's right. And it can be even better if once you've heard the amp in person, you have an assistant move the mic (while wearing headphones for talkback) while you listen in the control room.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[w_]

ah, good call, thanks. Don't know why that didn't occur to me.

[heylow]

Heylow, as far as the slight tilt, do you tilt away or toward the center of the cone? I'm thinking of getting a AT 4040 for a room mic, though I'm not sure how helpful it would b.
I've been doing tests this afternoon between micing and recording sirect with my Sansamp and I have to say the Sansamp (GT2) sounds very realistic if you pay a lot of attention to the EQ settings which are pretty sensitive.

The tilt is usually away from the center of the cone....almost (but not quite) at the same angle as the speaker....does this make sense? Try this to get the picture....point directly at the center, tilt away from the center...maybe an inch or so and then move it over so the mic points directly between the center and the edge. Man...I hope this makes sense.

A room mic can be a big help. Make sure its something you can use for multiple things though.

All due respect, I'd advise not using the sansamp and working out your micing techniques instead. Once you get it right, nothing beats a good sounding mic'd amp!


Good luck.....it CAN get frustrating!

heylow

[usd33]

Of course this is going to be a question that every member of the board is going to reply to. Mic placement on guitar amps is a very relative thing, it's all about the sound you want.
I personally will use an RE20 for most my electric close micings. Right up on the mic, maybe an inch off the grill.
Then, I will always grab some of the room sound by catching the some of the reverberation about four feet back from the amp and 2 feet above the ground with a cardiod condensor (I usually use a TLM 103) Good low(er) priced neumann.
The mix of these two mics together have always given me a sound that I'm more than happy with. And more importantly, that clients are happy with.

[ottokbre]

I go with Heylow on this one. With a 57 I am almost on the cone. Slightly off axis. But I go about 10" to a foot away. Otherwise I get no girth on the low-mids. But then again, that what I don't dig about a 57 with clean tones. But hell, we use what we got!

[Al]

It depends on amp set up, player, and the sound your after.

A close mic ,57,or whatever your using and a distant mic L.D.C.,record over two tracks"if you have that luxury" that will at least anable you to have enough scope to work with...experiment!

I've never gave this subject that much thought,i find a lot of people take too many pains over recording electric guitar , when really it's a piece of piss!!

[Rodgre]

My typical thing, which I picked up from another engineer (thanks Chris), is to take a condenser, a 57 and a ribbon (or really any three different sounding mics) and put them all against the grill, all equidistant, so their capsules are all on the same plane.

I like to use a 57, something like a Rode NTK/Groove Tubes GT-6/Rode NT-2/Shure KSM32 and maybe an Oktave ML52 ribbon (or a Royer if you have one... and the Royer or the Oktava could be the ONLY mic, and it would sound great to me). Sometimes instead of the ribbon, I'll use a Beyer M88.


I would put the mics side by side by side, all right across the middle of the speaker, maybe putting one of the mics on the "other" speaker in a 2X12" cab, and blend them all together until it sounds good. Each mic does it's own thing. I get punch from the 57, I get chime and meat from the ribbon and I get overall clarity and depth from the condenser. For any particular tune, I may blend in or out one or two of the mics. If you do that, you have a lot of bases covered.

Other times, I like taking an omni mic like a Stapes, a GT-6 in omni mode, or on a smaller amp, an EV635A. I'll pull them off the amp about fifteen inches and blend in some room and capture that "the amp is right in front of you" tone.

Roger

[tiger vomitt]

slamming a gtr amp's room mic with a compressor is sweet for loud guitar. like with the release pretty short and the attack just long enough to get the pumping thing goin on. ooohohohhhhh

you need a pretty quiet room tho to do this.

i got one of my favorite guitar sounds ever by leaning a condenser mic up against the grill (rockin a little bit of mechanical vibrations i suppose), as on axis to the cone as i could get it.

the trick tho was that the amp was on almost as quiet as i could get it. it was a doom-y kind of fuzz track with a frantone peachfuzz pedal. it needed a liberal dosing of HP and LP filters to get rid of the condenser junk (maybe like 85 hz and 8khz, 12db/oct?). i cant explain why, but the sound was really huge.


just offering a couple more options...


evan

[Mark]

Try an EV635A. There really is no proximity effect

[jon frank]

There is a of voodoo and hand waving when it comes to mic placement in front of guitar speakers. I learned the following from a old veteran. 1. What ever you do it should not take longer than 10 seconds of your time. 2. Develop an approach that is exactly the same everytime regardless of the speaker and regardless of the mic. 3. pick 1 to 3 mics to work with and this and the particular speaker, amp, and guitar one uses will give plenty of color options. 4. don't be afraid to try a good condensor if it doesn't have a huge diaphram. 5. fine tune your EQ from your guitar and amp If the EQ needs voodoo mic placement & tilting then don't do it just pick a different mic, speaker, amp, or guitar. 5. Run your speaker at a good volume and control the gain from the mic pre not the speaker volume.

Here's how to do it. Put on some head phones to monitor the mic and turn the mic pre up. Turn up the volume on the amp a bit. Move the mic straight on into the center of the speaker. Find the spot where the hum is the loudest-- usually this is just an inch or twoback from the grill. That is the sweet spot.

I know that there will be a flurry of outcry from this straight forward approach because we all know that we can drastically change EQ and attack by moving the mic to other places and changing the angle and it is fun to play with EQ.

Here's why it works. The spot where the hum is the loudest is the spot where the majority of frequencies are focused and phase change is nonexistent. If the mic angle is changed phase will change variable with frequency. If the mic is not dead center it will allow phase change with respect to sound wave amplitude. As the volume of the guitar amp goes up the proportion of hum with respect to clean sound goes down, i.e. As the speaker volume goes up the amount of hiss becomes minute. Since the gain is controlled from the mic pre when you are recording and it is way down you probably won't hear any hiss. If the hiss outdoes the quality sound coming from your amp there is probably something wrong with the amp. A bad tube can do this.

75% of the time for the past 3 years I have used a Neumann KM184 condensor mic for everything from a 15 watt combo to a 400 watt bass tube power amp. This condensor mic has yet to blow!!!! Previously I used a 57 all of the time and now use the 57 25% of the time.