Mic'd Cabs

[brack]

Up until now, I've just run rack preamps to the board. I tweaked out on the racks with headphones until I got the sound I liked. I like the sound, its nice. My recording room is small and reflective. I recently got a Mesa Tremoverb and started miking with a sm57. I've been trying everything to get the same (but better) sound, and it's a different beast.

All the sudden my playing seems sloppier when doubletracking, and I have to heavy EQ the recorded sound to get a nice tone.

I hate phase, I tried to fatten the tone with a large condenser about 2.5 feet from the front and I ended up muting it.

Tweaking the Mesa is consuming enough, to add the mic's and mixing to it all, is overwhelming. I know it's like this when you first get some piece of gear, its just frustrating getting to know a new thing. I can imagine what I want to hear, but I'm just not getting it yet.

It seems that if I record with no mids its really muddy, and if I add any mids it puts a hole in the center of my head... so I've found to record the mids and scoop them out in eq. It still doesn't sound as clean as direct yet, but I think I'll get there with patience.

I may try throwing a mic in the back of the cab tomorrow.

I do know I'm getting tired of this freaking song while I'm tracking a riff for the thousandth time. I'm sure my wife is too lol.

[Brendo]

i do hope you've read slipperman's whole rant on mic placement?

[weedywet]

There is an enourmous amount of fiddling you CAN do, and I'm sure there is lots of useful discussion to be had.

but on a simple, starting point level:
If you take a good mic and put it in front of a good amp, it should sound good.

not necessarily PERFECT, but good.

if it doesn't?
then it's not a good mic, not a good amp (or not for you or your guitar) or not in a good spot.

Does your guitar sound great through the amp, in the room, not on a mic, to you?

if it doesn't - FIX it. FIRST.

then if it sounds good out there but not on the mic, try another mic.

sometimes things as simple as a bad cable go missed because people start tweaking endlessly instead of troubleshooting simply to begin with.

What CAN you get a good soun on with that mic in that room on that pre and so on?
start by being sure everything actually WORKS right.

[brack]

Does your guitar sound great through the amp, in the room, not on a mic, to you?

if it doesn't - FIX it. FIRST.

Yeah, you're probably right about the git/amp. I may be WANTING tone more than getting it right now. I'm getting a much fatter tone, but more everything. I need to sit my amp down give it a few beers and have a heart to heart. I probably wasn't facing up to the tweaking work of just getting to know this amp first.

I'm so spoiled by headphones, now I'm considering building an amp room.

i do hope you've read slipperman's whole rant on mic placement?
I looked, and I'll continue looking for it, I'd love to read it. I was going for mid, or near outside edge of the speaker, about 2 inches from the grill. Tonite I tracked off axis about halfway to the edge from center about 2.5 inches and I liked that tone better... but only after tweaking some new tones out of the amp, so I'm probably just finding better tones.

[weedywet]

make it sound good BEFORE you start mic'ing it.

then you may still adjust the tone after hearing it mic'ed, but at least you know the thing CAN sound good.

[Brendo]

http://www.badmuckingfastard.com/sound/slipperman.html

[brack]

http://www.badmuckingfastard.com/sound/slipperman.html

This is GREAT. It's funny as shit too. I'd buy this, Slipperman should publish. I'd make a good video, if we could hear Slipperman's internal voice as he recorded zorch-fucko-twerg's guitar :lol:

Thanks for the link, Brendo.

[Tim Halligan]

Up until now, I've just run rack preamps to the board. I tweaked out on the racks with headphones until I got the sound I liked. I like the sound, its nice. My recording room is small and reflective. I recently got a Mesa Tremoverb and started miking with a sm57. I've been trying everything to get the same (but better) sound, and it's a different beast.



I agree with weedywet 100% here. Get the sound at the amp first...then introduce other elements in the recording chain.

I went through the same bollocks that you are facing when I first bought my Mk IV...so in a very large way, it's all Randall Smith's fault. :D

I had to completely re-learn how to get a "good" sound from the amp because the Mesa logic is almost 180 degrees from what I was used to.

So sit with the amp for a while...don't even have a mic any where near it and just take the time to learn the range of possibilites that you have at your disposal.

Patience grasshopper. :D

It won't happen overnight, but it will happen.

Cheers,
Tim

[weedywet]

Just to make the point, once again...

I hope Slipperman won't mind me reposting this from the beginning of that:

"'You gotta start in the room with 'the sound'. First, Put in some fucking earplugs, so when you go to get sounds on the desk later you'll actually have an opinion on ANYTHING. Then, get 'Einstein' to fiddle with his miserable square wave rectifier/noise generator until he confirms it is indeed producing "his sound". The incredibly new and amazing sound you haven't heard from anybody else.... in the last 15 minutes. This is MAJOR, once attained, we now have a starting point. We can now feel free to embark on our hellish voyage into the most fruitless and subjective undertaking ever conceived in the history of man's sad efforts on this sad and forgotten pebble in space. "A great guitar sound". Something NOBODY has agreed upon for more than 15 minutes since Ike left the White House.
If you can't get by this first hurdle IN THE ROOM. You are in deep shit.... I can't help you. God can't help you. YOU ARE FUCKED. FUCKED. KILL YOURSELF. It is imperative that the zorch-fucko-twerg playing guitar is hearing 'his sound' in the room. IT CANNOT BE OVERSTATED."

[AxeSlash]

DI guit vs. Micced cab.

Two fucking separate beasts, the differences between which are IMMENSE (see Slippy's DI rant - aka "Palmer Box" on the radio I think; worth listening for the hilarity as well as the DI discussion).

See the only problem with a micced cab situation is that there are now a whole bunch more variables that you gotta take into account. BUT, experience will teach you what you need to DO to those variables to get the desired result, and often the end result will be better than a DI would give you (dependant on what sort of material and sound you are wanting).

You will find yourself doing COMPLETELY different shit to a mic recording than you would to a DI recording.

[weedywet]

the MAIN thing I do with a mic'ed cab that I DON'T generally do with a DI guitar, is smile contentedly.


I usually reserve DIs for synths. and not even always then.

[otek]

Part of the problem, obviously, is that if you've been recording through DI preamps up until now, their signature sonics will have heavily influenced your understanding of how a guitar is supposed to sound.

It will probably take a while until you kick that habit.

Like Slipperman has pointed out repeatedly, a mic'ed cabinet is a lossy system. But if you learn to take advantage of that lossiness, you will find that you can take a quantum leap forward in terms of the size of your sound.


otek

[Immanuel]

Yes, lossy in some parameters, but definitely additive in others - like all the overtones generated from cone break-ups.

[AxeSlash]

It's all about time and reactions between components of the system.

You can get all sorts of shit going on with mics and cabs that you could never do with DI; the 'Palmer Box' episode shows this up pretty well; that immediacy sucks cock and balls for heavy stuff. And that's coming from a tightness freak.

You want palm mutes to go "CHUNNN" not "CUNNN".

IMHFO anyway.

And like Otek said, if you're used to hearing DI sound all the time then you will find that you gravitate towards that sound. The problem is, unless the genre you are playing specifically uses a lot of DI-esque guitar sounds, it's gonna sound like cock and balls to everyone else.

Expectations and mix trends. They suck for the really creative guys amongst us who want no boundaries, but some of that mix trend shit is there for a reason.


Why?



Because fuck me, it makes that riff sound HEAVY. :very happy:

I'm of the opinion that you CAN make a DI sound work. If you know what you're doing it can even be easy...

...BUT you'd probably get even better results from a micced cab.

DI is not unusable, but you end up having to treat it to make it sound like a micced cab before you can do any REAL work on blending it in with the rest of the mix cocktail. Micced cabs tend to sit a lot easier in my experience.

There have been a few times where I've got a decent basic mix, dropped a DI sound into it and thought "WOAH...fuck THAT; now which drawer did I leave the 57s in...?"

As with everything in this game, there are exceptions of course. Sometimes the Ripping Rat™ top end may actually be what you want (I'm thinking of stuff like oldschool black metal, electronic stuff, industrial, shit like that).



Alas, I ramble too much.

[Brendo]

how bout some clips of your DI vs your miced sounds?

[weedywet]

And like Otek said, if you're used to hearing DI sound all the time then you will find that you gravitate towards that sound. The problem is, unless the genre you are playing specifically uses a lot of DI-esque guitar sounds, it's gonna sound like cock and balls to everyone else.



and tiny, shaved ones at that.

...
DI is not unusable, but you end up having to treat it to make it sound like a micced cab before you can do any REAL work on blending it in with the rest of the mix cocktail. Micced cabs tend to sit a lot easier in my experience.


that's it.
the mic'ed amp always is just so much EASIER.
they just tend to sound 'right' straight away, whereas with DI and amp simulators I end up fiddling endlessly to try to make it feel right.

[Drummerboy]

I think I heard some DI Guitars on the new Bad Religion Album "New Maps to Hell", especially on the first two songs. Anyone who heard/owns it?

[brack]

I think I heard some DI Guitars on the new Bad Religion Album "New Maps to Hell", especially on the first two songs. Anyone who heard/owns it?

I was just reading that Lamb of God uses DI with plugins... Summer 07 issue of Computer Music - they call it "Re-Amping" - "Most notably used by metal behemoths Lamb of God and British producer Andy Sneap."

But I go from digitech RP-21 to a compressor to the board, not plugs.. Clips incoming.

[brack]

So here's 2 DI files and a mesa file with a 57.

The DI's are clean, I dont think I added any plugins to them, no compression, eq or anything. Git 1 intro, the drums are strike, and the bass/guitars through the RP-21d (stock tube). Both DI takes go from the RP-21d to a dbx 166xl compressor to a projectmix i/o and protools. Just 2 tracks hard right/left.

The mesa 57 file is a Mesa tremoverb dual recto with a SM 57 somewhere, probably near the edge of the speaker. I think I angled it straight to the grille that night. I recorded into logic pro, and added a silver compressor. This one has 2 guitars right and 2 left. I hate the sound, it's really nasal.

In my amps defense, I have been taking my time tweaking and I do have a better sound today than I did with this take, but I'm not 100% satisfied yet and I think I'm just going to take a break from the recording devices and get to know the amp more.

I think I'm going to send my Boss DS-1 to Keeley and have it modded, maybe that'll put the Mesa over the top. I pulled the 12AX7's out and put some groove tubes in there... I noticed a small difference in the attack, but the tubes I pulled were - sovteks and electro harmonix, and arent groove tubes and electro harmonix just sovteks? I probably just replaced them with more sovteks. Oh well, at least I know they're new tubes (I bought it with new power tubes).

[Holm]

From these clips it's clear that you are trying to get something similar to the DI from your amp and it just in general is lacking in tone and in balls. "The classic shit Mesa tone" quote from Slipperman from the Palmer episode immediately came to mind. (There was also some weird phasy shit going on with the miked tracs that made my head spin in a very nauseating way and I don't know if it was tuning or playing or post processing, but it in general was not very pleasant)

The DI clips were exactly as I remembered the tracks I had to work with a few years ago, Digitech 2112 DI-d. We finally ended up redoing all the guitars at the studio that the guitar player has DI-ed with the preamp, they were that bad.

In general you have to rethink how you are approaching "a good guitar sound" in your head and what you are thinking of being a good guitar sound. Lamb Of God your sounds definitely ain't.

BTW the first A Perfect Circle album guitars were all DI-ed too AFAIK. That doesn't mean DI is the preferred method of recording distorted guitars. Also, the moment you start adding other instruments to your guitar recordings the suckiness starts to multiply.

[brack]

From these clips it's clear that you are trying to get something similar to the DI from your amp and it just in general is lacking in tone and in balls. "The classic shit Mesa tone" quote from Slipperman from the Palmer episode immediately came to mind. (There was also some weird phasy shit going on with the miked tracs that made my head spin in a very nauseating way and I don't know if it was tuning or playing or post processing, but it in general was not very pleasant)

Yeah, I noticed the phasing too, that was the first time I tried to mic anything with 2 mics, and I did get phase. I never retracked anything because I'm just taking my time with the amp. I've always liked the way Mesa's sound live and on records, so I figured it was a good buy for me. The more I play with it, the more I'm thinking it may not be for me.

The DI clips were exactly as I remembered the tracks I had to work with a few years ago, Digitech 2112 DI-d. We finally ended up redoing all the guitars at the studio that the guitar player has DI-ed with the preamp, they were that bad.

I like the digitech rp21d tone. I had some money and figured I could get a better tone.

In general you have to rethink how you are approaching "a good guitar sound" in your head and what you are thinking of being a good guitar sound. Lamb Of God your sounds definitely ain't.

Not trying to sound like Lamb of God... I like them and all, but I'm going for a more mellow stoner rock tone. I figured the mesa would give me some flexibility on going for "my" tone and playing around with neu-metal or even some vintage tones. Seemed like a good all around amp to choose for a hobbyist.

I am, however tweaking the amp and getting better sounds... But I'm thinking about switching. My main guitar is a handmade copy of a prs McCarty semi hollow, any suggestions?

[weedywet]

to ME:

the Mesa sounds good for ONE sound... that tizzy alt-emo-nu-metal grunge.
everything else it tries to do sounds horrifying.


the thing is, nothing ELSE gets THAT sound, so i use them when i want that.

but the rest of the time? all Hiwatt and AC30
THEY do everything else so much better.


I don;t know your guitar, naturally.
saying it's a clone doesn;t say anything; in that there are clones of Fenders that sound horrible and clones of Fenders that sound better than most Fenders and so on...

it comes BACK to: get a sound you think you REALLY like out in the room - and only THEN stick a mic in front of it and see what's making it to the recording.
then adjust.

but until you know and love the sound you get at the source, it's a losing battle.

talking about it will only get you so much further.

[Cheech]

Concerning the miced tracks did you record 2 separate takes then combine them, or did you do 1 take with 2 mics?

If you did 1 take with 2 mics, thats prolly where you are getting your phase issue..... I would definitely do 2 separate takes, then pan 1 left and 1 right.

Try finding 2 nice tones with your amp that sound like they may compliment each other..... Maybe using a different guitar and or tweaking your amp differently. That will give you somewhere to start.

I usually track a solid reliable sound, then jam with it on another track, while experimenting with my (amp settings / different guitars/ different mic placement / different mic / different preamp) or all of the above.

Give it a shot......try everything, try wacky stuff (i.e. face the mic away from the cab against the wall its facing and record a treack that way...... you never know what you will stumble upon.

It all depends on how bad you want a good guitar tracks...

Have fun!!!

[DaveC]

Just thought I might point out that 'DI'ing guitars and the re-amping them' is NOT using a plug in. It is recording the guitars DI'd - perhaps listening to a plug in or a real amp to get the performance. Then re-amping the DI'd signal by sending them through a real amp and cab and recording that at a later date - the benefit is that you can get the guitar sound at a later stage of the production (and perhaps, in the absence of those pesky guitarists too).

Ideally you should use a re-amper - like a reverse DI box - to sort out your impedances and levels - to take the DI'd signal from your recorder to the amp.

[weedywet]

and the downside is that you don't KNOW if it is going to blend and work with the other sounds until later.

and every overdub you do NEXT, you have to do without hearing the actual guitar sound until you've reamped it.

[vanityaffair]

another good thing that comes from reamping is of course, the miracle of being able to hear the same performance through different amps to piece together your guitar puzzle. i've done it on a couple records where we had a shitload of amps to play with (marshalls, mesas, bogners, a soldano, and a framus). it's also great when you need certain things out of a performance that one amp can't do (mesa high-midrange + bogner lows = audio orgasm).

a LOOOOOT of producers do that, just to give the engineer/mixer some more tools to play with. on the recording sesh i mentioned earlier, we had 3 performances of each guitar part, all recorded through every single amp, to give the mixer some options. i should mention that we put these tracks in separate session files to have enough room for them all.

if you're mixing it yourself, god help you.

[weedywet]

or one MIGHT say these are choices the PRODUCER should have already made, not leaving it to the mixer.

[CaptainHook]

or one MIGHT say these are choices the PRODUCER should have already made, not leaving it to the mixer.

:Thumbsup:

I'm all about committing these days.
Don't tell my girlfriend though.. :Uh oh:

[DaveC]

personally I prefer committing and deciding the guitar sound early on, as weedy says it gives you a context to do the overdubs. Some of these sessions don't have the budget for hiring in other amps or the studio time for re-amping anyway.

[Holm]

we had 3 performances of each guitar part, all recorded through every single amp, to give the mixer some options. i should mention that we put these tracks in separate session files to have enough room for them all.

if you're mixing it yourself, god help you.

It would be a nightmare of epic proportions. I reminds me of a time when 1 producer that was also the artist at the time brought me a song and told me "yeah I have here 80 tracks of church organ freeform noodling. I expect you to choose which 1 track suits the song the most" when we had approx 2 days to finish mixing the album and I hadn't even received tracks for third of the songs.

I promptly told him to fuck off and do his choosing on his own. He was a bit offended but managed to pull himself together and choose a good part.

[brack]

getting better... i mean i dont think this is the greatest sound in the world yet, but its sounding better than digitech AND the mesa. I just threw a 57 up in front of the vox and did 2 tracks hard panned.

You were right, just throwing a mic in front of a nice tone is going to be better than playing with a tone i wished i had.

I hear a space for bass too. When I DI'd, I was always trying to find a spot for bass - it seemed like the tones in the DI guitar were taking a lot of the bass freqs. Like if I high-passed the guitars a lot of the tone would go too. Maybe thats just me. I probably dialed the guitar that low in the preamp.

[weedywet]

Cool.

now mic a BASS amp.
:very happy:

[dikledoux]

The mesa 57 file is a Mesa tremoverb dual recto with a SM 57 somewhere, probably near the edge of the speaker. I think I angled it straight to the grille that night.
Somebody check my work on this, but if Brack has to position a 57 like this, there's a good chance the sound coming from the amp is problematic to begin with.

Why? Mostly people run for the edge of the cone when the amp sounds way to fizzy (on distorted sounds) or just plain crazy bright and brittle (on clean sounds).

Here's another suggestion that I've found makes for a pretty reliable starting point on mic'ing a cab with a 57. Dial in your amp, get a quick level check and then put on your headphones. While someone is playing that guitar, get the 57 up in your headphones so you can hear it over the amp bleeding into your cans, and then move it around til you get the most up-front, present sound you can find. Keep the 57 right up on the grill, but move it across the speaker to find that spot, then try that spot at different angles. This will be the spot where the amp sounds like you finally got CLOSE to it... rather than sounding sorta distant and indistinct.

Then record that and listen back. If it sucks, your amp sound sucks. Cuz while a 57 may not be the BEST mic for what you're doing (maybe it is.. but you get the idea), it'll tell you if your amp sound is in the ballpark or not.

dik

[weedywet]

No, I often mic near the edge of the cone because, unless you remove the grill, you can get the mic much CLOSER to the actual cone than in the middle.

[eagan]

You know, I think it's good to point back at something Otek said that I think is a really nice little gem of a clue.

The idea that what you're used to, because it's what you've been doing and the sound you've been using, totally influences what you think about getting a sound, what you think about a sound at the moment as you work this stuff.

That sounds like the most blindingly obvious thing to say. Yet it's unbelievably easy to not realize it.

You fiddle and tweak, and consciously or unconsciously, every little tweak gets you thinking in terms of comparing it to what you've been using and hearing.

Sometimes, while this might sound like a little bit of a paradox, the best thing to do to make forward progress is to get away from it and forget about it.

This might not always be practical, depending on circumstances.

But, if you want to overhaul your electric guitar sound, alright. Go away. Forget the electric guitar even exists. Just play acoustic guitar for a few weeks, just to keep your chops up and all. Let the amps and stuff sit. Don't listen to a bunch of recordings of other people scrutinizing them in serach of The Bitchin' Guitar Sound. Forget all that.

Then, sometime later, come back, haul out a guitar, plug in, and discover this newfangled electric guitar thing as if it had just been left there by aliens or something. Start from zero and go at it until you like what you hear. Take a lot of long breaks, even then.

When you get all happy happy with what you're getting, then take the advice of the Weed and figure out how to get that sound recorded.


JLE

[brack]

I wanna thank you guys for suggesting the AC-30 and Otek for the SM-7b. This track is using both.

I know there's lots of cliche's in the track, but fuket. One time thru on all the tracks, and I recorded it in protools, but used space designer in Logic Pro for reverb on the guitar track. I DI'd the bass.. fuck mic'ing bass right now, I'm still learning all this other shit, hehe, and I'm no bass master.

Anyway, I love those vox tones and the SM-7 is a great mic for the money... I'll be hard pressed to put an SM-57 back on my amp.

Cheers!

[weedywet]

since you're in a growing, mind-expanding, moving forward, learning mode....

MIC a BASS AMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!