Mic-ing The Guitar Amp

GUITAR AMP


Zone Speakers

Dust cap in the centre has a more higher frequency content as you move out of the cone you get a lot of mid-range and fuller tone. The surround and edge of speaker has a bright and thinner type tone. 

*Use flashlight to find cone 
*Move the microphone near the grill to find the sweet spot
*Be careful of phase issues if using two mics
*Tone can't be fix in the mix so it is important to find the tone same goes to adding too much overdrive.
*The further you move your mic back (turn pre-amp up) the more the bottom end drops off thus getting more of the room sound and the closer you get the more direct sound and less room
*Small amp has more high end and more mid range.  

RECORDING GUITAR AMPS


GUITAR TONES

Clear Tone 

- Jazz and Indie 
- For Jazz and blues, move the microphone further away for a more ambience airy sound 

Overdrive

- Rock 
- Adding more overdrive (gain) out of your tone to get it to cut through to highlight more harmonic content
- For Rock, move the microphone closer for percussiveness and tighter sound

DIRECT INPUT


Passive 

- Use a form of balun transformer to convert high impedance signal to low impedance signal
- Features electrically separates the windings in the inputs and outputs stages
- Does not include a preamp
- Great for strong output instruments


Active

- Includes a preamp
- To provide extra gain to boost the weak outputs
- Great for driving long cable runs, some has advanced signal routing and higher headroom
- Great for keyboards and instruments with active pickup
- Requires power (battery / 48v phantom power) 

GUITAR AMPS MICS

Dynamic Mic

- Handle levels well
- Tight, Mid-range
- Work well with guitar amps
- Ex. Shure Sm57

Condenser Mic

- Hi-fi sound
- A good room mic
- Ex. lewitt lct 340 small diaphragm, Akg c12A large diaphragm

Ribbon Mic

- Warm round sound
- Ex. Royer 101

GUITAR AMPS FUNDAMENTAL MIC PlACEMENTS

One Microphone 

- Placing a dynamic microphone directly 6-inches from the cone of the amp.
- Use a small diaphragm microphone
- For attack point it on axis.
- For less attack point it towards the speaker slightly off axis.
- For more control and smooth out, off axis position angle it but still it is pointing towards the centre of the speaker.


On Axis


 Off Axis

Two Microphone

- Two microphones same as the one microphone technique( on and off axis )
- One microphone can be placed on axis and the other off axis (check phasing issues)
- To capture heavy distorted sound

Back of the amp

- One / two mics will be placed in front of the cones and the other dynamic microphone will be placed behind the amp (if it's open back)
- May have phasing issues

Room Microphone

- Capture the loudness of the amp in the space
- Make the recording powerful and realistic
- Placing it 3 - 15 feet away
- Point it away from the amp, towards the amp or point it towards the wall.

Great microphones to try

- Shure SM57
- Sennheiser MD 421
- Royer 101

Great microphones to amps

- Vox ac30
- Fender

IN THE MIX

*Blending dynamic and a ribbon mic. 
*When recording with a front and back mic, the back mic has to be phased reversed in the mix. Bring the back mic faders up slowly to get a balanced great sound. If it is on the same level (volume) as the front mic if can get a little murky thus blocking the attack coming from the front microphone. 

EXPERIMENT

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW ? 

- We would want to get the best sounding clean tone and test out how it sounds like for each placements and setup. 

GENERAL PLAN

Before micking the acoustic guitar

  1. Check the strings and tune the guitar.

Which technique

We will be using the one microphone, room microphone and the back amp technique. 

MICROPHONES USAGE AND PLACEMENT

One microphone 
  1. We will use one mic (SM57)
  2. We will try on and off axis and also tilted. 
One Microphone + Room Microphone
  1. Using one dynamic mic (SM57) and a ribbon mic 
  2. We will place the ribbon a few feet away(behind) from the SM57, both mics will be off axis. 

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

One microphone (On Axis)




It is more punchier because its placed very close to the centre of the cone and grill. 


One Microphone (Off Axis)


One Microphone (Tilted) 

IMG_8121.JPG

One Microphone + Room Microphone (Off Axis)

IMG_9246.JPG

OVERALL

We definitely preferred the one microphone off axis method as it gives up the best of both worlds of reducing harshness and getting the clarity we wanted. 

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 19, 2018 at 7:32 PM

    Why 6 inches? what happens if it's closer or further away? What mics are you choosing and why?

    ReplyDelete

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