struggling with guitar tone...

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pk
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struggling with guitar tone...

Post by pk » Fri Oct 24, 2008 2:01 pm

I'm trying to stop the direct guitar recording thing and get better at capturing the tone of the amp but for the life of me, really having a difficult time translating what I hear in the room-->from the amp....into the computer. While the direct recording sounds ok at best, I'd rather improve on the mic + amp situation.

Granted, I don't have top notch instruments, a Fender Strat (MIJ '57 reissue with humbucker bridge), and an Epiphone Dot ($400 ES335 copy), but they do sound decent in their own right. Amps are a Vox Pathfinder and a Fender Princeton 112. I'm starting to wonder if my chain of pedals are altering the tone in a negative way, dunno. There's a ZVEX Box Of Rock boost/overdrive, Fulltone '69 fuzz, EG Micro-Pog, EH Memory Man and Holy Grail. When I do record direct, I usually dial in a tone going through the pedals first, I don't record clean and expect a crappy guitar amp sim plugin to take me to tone heaven. Eeek...

Mics: Cascade Fathead II, Rode NT1A, Studio Projects C1, Shure SM7, SN81 and Beta 57. Nothing fancy but I figure I could get something decent out of this selection.

I've tried them in so many combinations and placement and still.....it's like, almost there but there's a little something missing upon playback. Being that I'm still relatively new at recoding guitars with mics, maybe some advice from fellow Tape-Opers is in order. I've tried the mic center cone vs. off-axis and placed at 2 o'clock of the cone outer rim, definitely preferred the latter, as center cone sounded shrill and an ice-pick like 5khz boost that wasn't pleasant at all. The problem I'm having is that the playback sounds so small in comparison, it's hard to explain but I feel it's not capturing everything I'm hearing. I love stacking guitar tracks to create a denser wall-of-sound vibe, I've done it, but my goal here is to just try to capture a nice big tone from one guitar track only. I get that tone when playing, but the clarity and bigness is lost once recorded, sniff....

The room is nowhere near perfect either, may I add, but between a close mic like the SM7 an inch from the grill and an SM81 or NT1A a couple of feet back, I really imagined having something a bit more meaty in Logic without feeling like the room imparting so much on the overall tone? The amps are raised from the floor as well, I have them on A-Frame guitar stands so they're decoupled from the floor.

If any of this extra info helps: recording through an Ensemble and Germanium (which I just got and love but hasn't helped my guitar tone issues), 24 bit in Logic, with proper gain/recording levels which I now pay close attention to. I will also add that this problem occurs mostly when trying to recorded distorted overdriven tones, clean somehow comes in nice and.....clean.

Thanks for any advice.

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Post by pk » Fri Oct 24, 2008 2:24 pm

Oops, didn't realize there is somewhat of a similar recent thread, about getting a heavy guitar tone going direct. Good info there too...

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Post by JohnDavisNYC » Fri Oct 24, 2008 2:34 pm

distorted guitar is pretty hard... second only to bright telecaster > fender sounds, which seem to always be icepicks in my ears.... I find that the amp is the biggest factor... small amps cranked up yield amazing drive tones, and one of the best I have heard is the Fender Pro Junior... crank it way up, keep the tone low, and it is super meaty and crunchy.

since you say the track seems small, I would try the ribbon mic a few inches off the grill, dead center... the figure 8 pattern will give you some extra low end, as well as letting some ambience from the room leak into the back lobe.

I have a feeling that the problem lies more in the amp than anything... in the room you are hearing the resonance of the room and the air, whereas the mic is just hearing what is coming off the speaker... maybe try taking a DI and mic-ing, using 'guitar amp pro' for the meat and the mic for the texture... GAP is actually really really good... I have used it a bunch on albums instead of amps.

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Post by farview » Fri Oct 24, 2008 2:55 pm

Can you post an example of what you are getting? "Big distorted guitar sound" can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.

"Big" usually mean a sense of space. You will need to have some sort of stereo-ness in order to achieve that. Either a stereo mic technique or layered tracks.

The way I get around the whole problem is I have a speaker cabinet in another room all miced up. I plug into the amp in the control room and start dialing in the tone while listening to the control room monitors. What the amp sounds like in the other room is irrelevant, what it sounds like through the mics is what is important.

Normally, good recorded guitar tones are gotten from an amp that has a relatively dark sound dialed in.

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Post by pk » Fri Oct 24, 2008 3:10 pm

Unfortunately I don't have another room to put the amp in, but I hear ya on the importance of what's coming through the monitors, post-converters. Good advice, and I just dug up my Owzinski book and looked into different setups, I think I might also give this a try, putting the mic behind the amp, like on the Princeton, which has an open back. Will give the Fathead another try, thanks for that John.

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Post by farview » Fri Oct 24, 2008 3:29 pm

The converters don't have anything to do with it. You need to be listening to what the mics are hearing.

My stab-in-the-dark guess would be that you have a really bright distorted sound that doesn't have a lot of mids. I could be completely wrong, it's just very common when people are using pedals.


What type of tone are you going for? If you are trying to get a NUmetal tone out of a Fender amp and some pedals, you are on a fools errand. (for example)

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Post by wren » Fri Oct 24, 2008 4:20 pm

Just out of curiosity, are you unsatisfied with the "big"-ness of the guitar sound in the context of a mix, or are you listening to just the guitar? I ask because I've recently been learning (the hard way) that a guitar that sounds "big" and full across the frequency spectrum on its own often doesn't blend well with other instruments come mixing time.

Aside from that: yeah, knowing the exact kind of "big distortion" you're going for would make advice easier to give. :)
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Post by losthighway » Fri Oct 24, 2008 5:08 pm

Your amps sound like they're small. I love a small amp tone, but not because it's big. Usually they sound kind of nasal with a lot of character. Usually a 2-12 has a bit more of a round bottom (hee hee).

Solid state small amp with a high gain pedal might be a little bee swarm sounding, more than 'big' or 'warm'.

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Post by drumsound » Fri Oct 24, 2008 5:59 pm

Just q shot in the dark here---are your two mics causing phase cancelation of some sorts?

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Post by Wilkesin » Fri Oct 24, 2008 7:41 pm

have you read that "slipperman's distorted guitars from hell" diatribe? There are some good tips in there. google it.
Slider wrote:"we figured you'd want to use your drum samples and reamp through your amps anyway, so we didn't bother taking much time to get sounds".

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Dan Phelps
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Post by Dan Phelps » Fri Oct 24, 2008 7:56 pm

Sometimes dialing back the amount of distortion/saturation from what feels "right" in the room will equal a track that sounds better in the context of a mix. Super saturated sounds often come off as small, and the lack of dynamics (distortion = compression) can make things hard to place with other instruments.

Also, sometimes what seems like a really big guitar sound in a mix is really just a medium sized guitar in a good arrangement with with other instruments, particularly bass.

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Post by pk » Sat Oct 25, 2008 12:00 pm

You've all brought great points to all of this, most of them I was aware of (bigness on it's own vs. in the context of the mix, etc.), and I've finally found a great combination that put a lid on my issue, for now at least.

SM7 one inch from the grill at 2 o'clock on the outer rim of the cone, and the SM81 (surprisingly beautiful on gtr amp) one foot away smack center of cone. This is on the modest Princeton 112. It sounds just how I wanted it, which is what I'm hearing in the room. Sorry I couldn't be more descriptive about the type of tone I was after, that alone eludes me at times, as it wasn't any particular tone in this case, it was just for the recording to translate properly, and now that's done. I'm happy.

In the end, it's all about experimenting, thank for the guidelines everyone.

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Post by RefD » Sat Oct 25, 2008 12:32 pm

when i'm recording guitar i very rarely get a good representation of the amp sound in the room, so i listen to the mic(s) and not my ears in the room when trying to get the sound together.
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Post by JWL » Sun Oct 26, 2008 11:43 am

For heavy sounds, I'd (probably) be using the Fat Head and the Beta57. I'd probably start with the Fat Head off axis, pointing toward the center of the cone, and the 57 in the center of the cone on axis. Then, I'd listen through headphones to both mics at the same volume level, flip the phase of the Fat Head, and move the Fat Head around until the tone is THINNEST and nasty.

Then, flip the phase of the Fat Head back to normal, and you should have 2 killer tracks that complement each other well. The 57 will give you a nasty, high end, very present tone, and the Fat Head should give a fatter, "warmer" tone (ed. note: beware of BUZZWORDS in the previous sentence....LOL).

Anyway, the above would be my starting point. If it doesn't work, then I'd change the location of the amp in the room until it sounds best naturally, THEN mic it up. Come to think of it, I'd probably do this first..... :twisted:

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Post by Rolsen » Mon Oct 27, 2008 11:18 am

I reluctantly post this suggestion, as it highlights my own failings in achieving what I want to get out of an amp. I also have the Fathead, the C-1, the 57 and some other stuff. I've gotten really close to being perfectly satisfied with the Fathead about a foot away, and an audix I-5 (like a 57) right on the grill. Fudge the Fathead until phase is correct.

Then I got a Sansamp Liverpool pedal/emulator. It sounds like how I want to capture my AC30, but it does so with no more effort than plugging a guitar cable straight into my DAW. I have not bested it, to my dismay, with miking.

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