Micing up a guitar cab

[frosty55]

Can anyone recommend which mic to use on a guitar cab?
My band will be cutting a demo shortly, and i have a few mics to choose from.
My cab is a 4x12 with vintage 30 and celestion greenbacks in it.
My amp is a 50 watt Laney pro tube. Pre amp on it will be flat out and i will be going into an ibanez tubescreamer for more gain.
My guitar is a Gibson les paul with Seymour Duncan humbuckers. I own a SM58, SM57, and a Beyer Dynamic M69. Wont have any real time to test the mics in the studio. Which should i go for?
Thanks chaps

[Jag]

SM57 is pretty standard and hard to go wrong with.

Don't point the mic straight at the voice coil, that usually sounds harsh. Move it a couple inches off center of the voice coil and a couple of inches back from the grill. Angle it toward the voice coil if you want a little more crispness but, straight on usually is the best way to go if you can't do any experimenting.

Any decent dynamic cardiod mic will work fine for demos. It will be more important to make sure you are not clippling the input of the recorder.

[tubeswell]

SM57

[Mark Black]

Just don't do it like this...

[Don Moose]

One home recordist swore that an SM57 set up as described above, and a second one at 90 degrees to it - across the centerline of an adjacent speaker - was the way to go.

But only if you find you have the time to screw with it.

[pdf64]

I get consistant results which I'm really happy with byputting the mic up to the grille so as to press on it a little. Visualize the speaker cone behind it - get the mic pointing at 90 degrees to the cone about halfway between the voice coil centre and the start of the outer suspension. Effectively this means putting mic head about 1/3 of the way along the speaker aparture at about 60 degrees to the grille, ie so that the body of the mic will be across the centre of the speaker.
If you've got another channel available then mic up another speaker in the same way, and pan hard left and right.
Your guitar tone will sound much more distorted in the studio, normal room reverb must smooth up the sound, so turn the pre amp gain down as low as you can manage. Otherwise it will come out like a messy buzz with no dynamics.
Make sure everyone knows their parts inside out, as any slight timing mismatches will be obvious. Have an unplugged acoustic rehearsal beforehand.
Good luck - Peter.

[Ptron]

I had a gig once where I played pedal steel on a live public radio show. The engineer set a mic a foot or two in front of me. By the time I realized he hadn't set it there temporarily, that he was trying to mike the steel like it was an acoustic instrument, it was too late - We were on.

[NickH]

I own a SM58, SM57, and a Beyer Dynamic M69. Wont have any real time to test the mics in the studio. Which should i go for?

As the others have already said, the SM57 will be a great choice for this, again though put on a set of isolating (closed backed) headphones and listen to what the mic is hearing while moving it around, like with any other instrument this is important, a few inches can mean the difference between golden tone & angry bee in a tin.. and it's super quick to do, you can usually align a mic like this & get the sweet spot in a few seconds.

If you decide to use a second mic (and I probably wouldn't recommend it for this particular project) be sure to Phase align the mics properly before hitting record..

Here is a foolproof way to get them phase aligned quickly:-

• 1 - Find the sweet spot for the SM57 with the headphones as described above
• 2 - Mute the 57 and find the sweet spot for the second mic the same way (sometimes a 421 is a great choice for this)
• 3 - Un mute the 57, put the faders at up to zero bring the gain up on both mics to no greater than -6db on your meters, make sure they are evenly matched for volume
• 4 - Hit the polarity (sometimes incorrectly labeled 'Phase') button on the SM57 channel only
• 5 - Unplug the guitar & make sure no one plugs it back in while you are doing this next step (lock em out if you need to!) and turn the gain up on the amp until you get a nice loud hiss, then turn your headphone volume up so that the hiss is at a good volume in your headphones.
• 6 - Move the second mic carefully backwards and forwards while listening to the hiss, you will hear it getting louder & quieter, adjust it so that the hiss is at its quietist & lock it off in the quietist position.
• 7 - Return the headphone volume back to normal, amp volume back to normal and deselect the polarity button on the SM57 channel
• 8 - Keeping the SM57 fader up, drop the second mic down to infinity & then bring it slowly up to taste, blending it in with the 57 until you get the best sound..
• 9 - Sit back and bask in your loverly phase aligned multi mic'ed guitar tone

Cheers



N

[StarGeezers]

We've heard some favorable comments on the Sennheiser e 609 , just dangled in front of the speaker...anybody tried one of these... ???

[Rocko]

Tahanx