Skip to main content

SM57's / Sennheiser 421 are pretty common but what else have you had success with? Old fenders and Marshalls in particular but any amp in general.

Tags

Comments

anonymous Fri, 04/01/2005 - 13:42

good question...

if you doing a crunch guitar and want to maintain 'balls'... i think you need to do things a bit different. the 57 and dynamics will give you alot of the high frequency squeel and fuzz but no meat. and without it, you cant capture a real solid tone.

ive done work with heavier bands almost exlusively. ive found that the guitar tone (distorted) needs to be taylored to the bass tone. if you have a picked bass, an overdriven one, if you tune a step down, a slap... whatever... you will have to compensate with how you record you guitars.

can you tell me a bit more with what sort of sound your going for? and bass rig? also what sort of distortion do you use? strait up mesa rec? i can give you better advise...

peace

anonymous Fri, 04/01/2005 - 13:46

depends. a 57 in front of a cab can sound great, as long as your going into a neve and then into a distressor.

try every mic you have in front of your cab with every angle and every distance. what works in your room with your mics and your pres may not be the same with the exact same setup.

try it all, thats the fun part.

steve

TheArchitect Fri, 04/01/2005 - 14:24

dabhoys wrote: Does the need change for big distorted guitars tones?

Will a 57 do the job there???

I've a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier with a 4x12.

Whats the best techniques to getting a good sound. I've been told to crank the amp as loud as you can go? does this really make any difference....

Volume matters to a point. Contrary to popular legend, diming out a Marshall or most any amp isn't necessarily the path to guitar Nirvana. Backing down to 7-8 can clean up a lot artifacts and restore a lot of punch and articulation without giving up much in other areas. For most amps and especially for clean tones you need to turn up enough to get the power section going and get some of that nice compression from the power tubes. That happens long before "10" on the volume.

The best dirty sounds to my ear are usually a combination of preamp gain and power amp grind. Most modern amps have that built in but many players put some sort of overdrive in front of the vintage pieces to get a little more juice which is the same idea.

As for mic'ing techniques, they are wide and varied but the more common ones have been outlined above.

therecordingart Fri, 04/01/2005 - 22:40

I haven't been fortunate enough to try an MD421, Royer R121, or any of the more "expensive" mics. I mainly use a combination of the 57, Senn E609, and an Audix i5. They do the job, although there are other mics that people swear by. It's really hard not to bring out a 57 because the sound is so predictable. I know what sound I'm going to get out of a 57, and most of the time it is what I'm looking for. I'd like to try out the Royer, but not in the budget.

anonymous Fri, 04/01/2005 - 23:45

I like to put a 57 on the grill, and move it around until the tonal balance works with the song. Then I put a condenser 5 to 10 feet back, and mix it in this it sounds good, making sure that its not too phasey. I generally print both signals to one track, but thats purely a habit of mine because i'd rather choose the sounds tracking so it frees me up to do different things in mix down.

As far as the amp being turned up. If it has a tube output stage (a real tube amp) it makes a difference. I get clients that say they love the overdriven sound of thier Marshall MGX or whatever they are, but on a solid state amp, all it does is add distortion from the speaker maxing out. The post above is completely right though, taking it to "11" doesn't usually result in the best tone, but taking it above 5 or 6 usually adds a lot of meat. I like to compensate for the increased power amp distortion by backing off the pre amp distortion, so you get less white noise on tape and it sits in a mix better.

K

anonymous Sun, 04/03/2005 - 20:55

Kurt Foster wrote: KEL HM-1. I've tried this one and it really smokes on guitar amps. You can mash it right into the grill without getting that "rice crispies" effect ... (crackle distortions) . Cheap too! ($99)

Kurt, where can you order these from?? i searched is guitarcenter, sam ash, and ebay, all with 0 matches.