![]() Of course, using two mics on any source raises the issue of phase. Where you have the facilities, you could also try combining the outputs from two mics, one close, and the other further away, or one in front of the amplifier and one behind. Open-backed cabinets tend to have a 'bigger' sound than closed ones, as the speaker doesn't have a cushion of air to damp it, so low-frequency sounds seem more pronounced. You'll also find that the sound changes depending on whether the amp is on the floor or on a stand (or chair), as the floor reflections will interact in a different way. In this latter case, placing a reflective board on the floor between the amp and mic can liven up the sound in a very useful way. I've also had good results miking the back of an open-backed cabinet or, in a decent-sounding room, putting the mic up to a metre away from the front grille. Photo: Richard EcclestoneĪlthough the traditional rock approach is to put a dynamic mic right up against the grille, you can often get a better sound by backing off from the speaker slightly, just by a few centimetres. Placing your guitar's amp on a chair or stand to raise it off the floor will change the recording, because of the different way the sonic reflections combine with the direct sound. In most studio situations, cardioid mics are used to reduce the amount of spill or room interaction, but as guitar amps are relatively loud and the mics generally set up pretty close, you can also try omnis or figure-of-eights if you have them and the spill shouldn't get much worse. You can also turn cardioid mics slightly so the sound is hitting the mic off axis if you need less top end. You'll notice that the sound becomes more focused as you move the mic closer to the speakers, and it also gets more mellow as you move away from the centre of the speaker towards the edge of the cone. Often where you place the mic makes more difference than what the mic is, and sometimes a mic that sounds dreadful on vocals can sound very musical on guitar. The old standby is a Shure SM57 or Sennheiser MD421 dynamic cardioid, but you can try literally any dynamic or capacitor mic you have in your locker, from the cheapest to the most esoteric. While it's easy to suggest mic types for vocals or specific acoustic instruments, you can try just about anything you have on a guitar amplifier and get an interesting tonality. If you have a larger amplifier than this, and most people have, then a power soak between the amp and speaker is a good way to keep the level down while still allowing your amplifier to work hard. Unless you have a very large recording space, a smaller amplifier is easier to mike up than a large one and the 6W Cornford amp that Dave Lockwood played through at the guitar show proved to be so loud that we still needed to use a power soak with it to cut down the level reaching the speakers. If you are going to mike up an amplifier, it obviously needs to be a nice-sounding amp, and for most discerning players that means a well-maintained tube amplifier of some kind. Interestingly, we tried all these options recently during a seminar that we put on for the London Guitar Show and the results were most enlightening. Most players agree that a nice amplifier, properly miked, still gives the best results for traditional electric guitar sounds, but some of the digital emulations now get very close indeed. ![]() Which option you choose depends both on your recording situation and on the sound you wish to achieve. There's also the option of buying a speaker cabinet in a soundproof enclosure, which you can connect to your own amplifier and then mic up conventionally (the mic goes inside the box with the speaker, just in case you were wondering!) without allowing more than a whisper of sound to leak out into the room. ![]() At one time the only accepted way to record the electric guitar was to mic the amplifier, but now there are guitar recording preamps (both analogue and digital), active and passive speaker simulators, and software modelled guitar preamp plug-ins to choose from. So, if you're not a Logic user, the majority of this article will still be useful to you, and most of the Logic part can be applied to other software platforms. This article effectively covers two areas - the basic methods of recording the electric guitar and some techniques for recording and processing that are specific to Logic. ![]() Find out how to record a great electric-guitar sound into Logic, and which of the plug-ins have the most impact at mixdown. ![]()
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