Recording High gain dirt at a reasonable to very loud volume

[Elessar [Sly]]

As far as an SM57 is concerned, where would you place the mic? I have tried different angle's and placements against the cone/cloth and I haven't quite got the sounds I want. I have the mids dialled in a bit, and I know the SM57 is a mid range mic, so perhaps I could tried less mids..

Also I wondered if place it further away from the amp at higher volumes will achieve a bigger sound? Perhaps two mics: one nearer the amp, and one further away would get a better overall sound?

[Cirrus]

The 57 is a great mic for high gain because it shapes the tone nicely for a whole mix while keeping it in your face. On its own, it may well seem ragged or a bit midrangey and flabby in the bottom end, when compared to the godly tone you're actually hearing in the room.

I've often tried other mics- md421, Audix I5, condensers and ribbons on distorted guitar but frequently I'll get to mix time and find that the extra clarity hinders rather than helps my ability to get the guitars sounding in your face without stepping all over other stuff. That's not to say there aren't times when those mics are better, but that's the game you play - it's all about the context the recorded guitar is going to end up in. If its gonna be exposed on its own other mics might be better choices.

With a 57 I would start with the tone you want in the room. Put the mic halfway between the centre and edge of the cone, perpendicular to the grill, as close as you can get without it touching. If it's too bright, move it closer to the edge. If that gets too mellow, try keeping the mic closer to the centre but twisting it so it's pointing towards the edge. If it's too dull, move the mic closer to the centre of the speaker.

That close in, you'll be getting proximity effect which means more bass. That might be just the ticket, or you might want to pull the mic back a bit. That'll thin the bass out a bit, which will have the effect of opening out the tone and leaving the lower mids more exposed. That's frequently a good thing in a mix. The downside is you start getting more room tone relative to the direct sound, so you need to make sure your room ambience isn't ballsing the sound up. If you want a bigger sound, pulling the mic back will only work if the amp sounds big in the room.

As for two mics, that can work or be a can of worms. I know a few mixers who swear by it, and others who always throw away all the superfluous stuff and go with the single close mic. I once got a great ( to me anyway) heavy sound on a 4x12 by putting two 57s on the same part of the cone close up; one straight on and one at 45 degrees. Not sure why but it worked.

Ultimately the best way when you're recording is to have a good sound in the room, put the mic where it sounds best, and then evaluate the result in the context of what the guitar is going to be mixed with. Anything else is just guessing. That means you need to be able to hear what the mic hears as you're moving it about - closed back headphones are useful if you don't have separate rooms. You also need some idea of the other sounds the guitar is going with- a rough drum/bass/scratch vocal mix or something.

That's my massively inflated two pence anyway.

[Elessar [Sly]]

Thanks guys this is helpful stuff! I'm recording ROUGH tracks tonight at rehearsal so we can all have a demo of the new material. For a quick mic up (after getting a decent room level) what would you suggest for two guitars? Both switch between clean and dirt. One will be a super strat through a Laney and the other will be a les paul through an Orange. It sounds anal but it'd be cool to be able to have a semi-decent recording in terms of clarity between the two.

[Cirrus]

Thanks guys this is helpful stuff! I'm recording ROUGH tracks tonight at rehearsal so we can all have a demo of the new material. For a quick mic up (after getting a decent room level) what would you suggest for two guitars? Both switch between clean and dirt. One will be a super strat through a Laney and the other will be a les paul through an Orange. It sounds anal but it'd be cool to be able to have a semi-decent recording in terms of clarity between the two.

Personally, I'd just use a 57 for each cab. The clarity/ seperation will come from the fact that they (I hope, anyway) sound different in the room and play complimentary parts that don't step on each other. Also I'd pan them hard Left/Right and call it a job well done, with the drums, bass and vocals up the middle. Worked for Glassjaw!

[Elessar [Sly]]

Thanks guys this is helpful stuff! I'm recording ROUGH tracks tonight at rehearsal so we can all have a demo of the new material. For a quick mic up (after getting a decent room level) what would you suggest for two guitars? Both switch between clean and dirt. One will be a super strat through a Laney and the other will be a les paul through an Orange. It sounds anal but it'd be cool to be able to have a semi-decent recording in terms of clarity between the two.

Personally, I'd just use a 57 for each cab. The clarity/ seperation will come from the fact that they (I hope, anyway) sound different in the room and play complimentary parts that don't step on each other. Also I'd pan them hard Left/Right and call it a job well done, with the drums, bass and vocals up the middle. Worked for Glassjaw!

Cheers. Yeah they were always going to the panned left/right I haven't recorded for a long time, and I appreciate the advice. The tracks will be recorded on the vocallists mac (logic) and I'll take the Audio on a memory stick and import them to cubase.

[exafro]

You may not to need to go as you'd think. Just get it to a comfortable volume that isn't gonna kill your ears and fatigue them quickly. If at all possible try to isolate yourself from the amp. The clearer you can hear what the mic is capturing the better. You'll be able to make better decisions regarding mic placement, and quicker.

[RIFF]

I've been using a 1x12 to record lately. You can get one speaker pumping as needed without 3 more just adding noise to the room, and 1 is a little more defined. Just one SM57. Mic placement about 10-12" from the dustcap, about 2" off center, aimed halfway between dustcap & edge.

I tweak the amp with the speaker tilted back & aimed right at my head, till it sounds good like that. Then mic the amp & tweak the mic placement if needed. If its too bright or grainy, its too close to center. If too boomy, you may back it off.

Ive used dual micing, & its ok sometimes, but I find 1 mic better. Also a 2nd mic can dull the sound or create phase anomalies.


Mic placement is crucial & I recommend you test various positions to see what suits you.

[Elessar [Sly]]

I will have to try this next time I record dirt, thanks guys!

[DNW]

If you don't already have 'em, get a decent pair of isolating headphones and get to know them a bit. That way you can basically sit in front of the cab with a mic and the guitar and just move it around to get an idea of different sounds, without having to run back and forth to the computer to see how it sounds. You'd probably want 'em anyway for tracking, unless your cab and mic are in a separate room, and even if they are, sometimes I find I track certain things better with the directness of the sounds going straight in from headphones. A looper pedal can be handy for this kind of thing too, as you can play a riff, loop it, and then just worry about the mic position while it keeps playing over and over, rather than having to sit there adjusting a stand or just playing one handed open string chugging or whatever.

With a 57 you'll get a lot of proximity effect with the mic right up against the cloth. Sometimes it might be a good thing, sometimes you might want to back it off an inch, or a few inches, or whatever.

I've always preferred dual mic'ing for my own stuff (usually just two 57s), as I always ended up with compromises I wasn't happy with when just using one mic. One would generally be dead centre up to the cloth to get the high end and low end, and then one was off-axis or further out from centre or whatever to capture the body of the sound. They'd both sound pretty bad on their own, but the point was to find the right blend of the two to get the whole sound as I wanted to hear it. For something I recorded for some friends, they wanted a rubbish harsh black metal sound. So a third mic was used a few inches further back to basically capture an assload of horrible high freqs. And I think in the end we ended up only using two of the tracks. But whatever, we captured it all and had the options to work with later on.

But, the dual mic stuff is me being a bit picky. If I was just recording demo stuff or whatever, I'm sure I could get a reasonable sound with just one mic. But it also depends on the sound being recorded really. When we gig, it's generally just one 57 straight on a bit out from the cap.


Also, I wouldn't pan full hard left/right, more L80/R80 or something like that. Hard left and right can sound a bit unnaturally separated IMO. Leaving 'em a little closer in will still give plenty of separation, but won't sound "outside of the mix" like hard panning can.

[Cirrus]

Also, I wouldn't pan full hard left/right, more L80/R80 or something like that. Hard left and right can sound a bit unnaturally separated IMO. Leaving 'em a little closer in will still give plenty of separation, but won't sound "outside of the mix" like hard panning can.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

[TIP]

I've been a recording engineer for almost 20 years, and have been hanging out on forums since the old HC amp days(1999)...and so far this single thread has the best, most succinct info on recording an electric guitar track. DNW's info on the use of headphones to sweep the cone is a must if you are working alone or in a top notch recording studio.


In the old days using more than a single source(multiple mics)could open up a can of worms, but now with the ability to shift the time between the two or more tracks, the comb filtering from the phase discrepancies is a thing of the past.

So if you are new to recording...this is so far a lot of great info.


And to those that hate 57's...you may hate the way they sound solo'd, but in a mix I'm hard pressed to think of a mic that works better to put the guitar where it needs to be on a crunchy rock mix.

[DNW]

I fix this with hard panning and a blended mono reverb down the middle that the whole mix feeds through. That way no matter what's happening anywhere in the mix, be it left, right, center, or somewhere in between, every OTHER part of the stereo field is getting the reflections of the "room" the performance is supposed to be happening in. To me it sounds more natural than just not ever panning anything hard left/right. Because, seriously, you can set amps on opposite sides of the room, but you'll still hear the room in every note from either one.

That is certainly a valid way to go about it. To clarify, I wouldn't say never hard pan anything. It's a space in the mix that is there to be used. But I would be rather selective about what took those spots, especially constant things like rhythm guitar tracks.

Although, I did stuff ages ago that used hard L/R panning, but it was for a metal mix with quad tracked rhythm guitars and two of those guitars were closer in to centre. So I guess it's somewhat like your reverb trick, in that there were guitars right out there L/R, but there were also another pair a bit closer in to keep it sounding together. From memory the outside ones might have sat a bit lower in the mix, or maybe a bit mid-scooped or something like that. And from memory I drove myself freakin' nuts nailing those quad tracked guitars and swiftly abandoned the idea after I was done with that song.

[Cirrus]

This is going a bit off topic but it's something that might be of interest. If it's not, I'm really sorry for blabbering on.

From hanging out at recording forums, I've learned that in the industry hard panning is very, very common. Check out LCR (left centre right) or Cardinal Points Panning at places like The Womb Forums, Pro Recording Workshop, and the archived Pro Sound Web R/E/P forums. There are some very experienced and successful recording engineers there and the general consensus is that hard panning is a pretty good idea. And if you spend some time analysing commercial mixes in lots of different genres, you'll find that to hold true - there's lots of hard panning of important elements. And the amazing thing is that you wouldn't even notice if you hadn't moved the balance between hard left and hard right and compared what you can and can't hear on each channel. The main mix elements are frequently LCR with soft panning reserved for the secondary stuff like synth pads, backing vocals etc.

Meanwhile down at the kind of level most of us operate at, there's a fear of hard panning - people worry that it results in mixes that are unbalanced and/or unnaturally wide and amateurish. I find that quite interesting, because I felt the same way. I think it might be because when we start out our individual tracks and performances aren't that confident, so we want to blur it all together and keep things from standing out. Then we get better at playing and recording but hold onto that mindset. However, the single biggest leap in the quality of my mixes was when I started doing LCR mixes and only using soft panning for the occasional stuff. The mixes became more exciting, punchy and real sounding.

The thing I've found is that the more bold you are while mixing, the more exciting it is. Having hard panning sounds exciting. Having a mix that's unbalanced left/right adds tension, as long as you do it right. Stacking parts at the edges lets you have more going on while maintaining a clear and obvious rhythm and vocal in the centre. When you start soft panning the major mix elements, things start to sound a bit more indistinct - maybe not on your monitor setup, but when someone is sitting in the car listening to your music, or in a living room with two speakers set up so no one could ever be in a position to appreciate the panning anyway.

The in between bits are a phantom image created by the two physical speakers, and as you move away from the centre point the phantom image is skewed and muddied up by phase +volume shifts. Meanwhile, anything that's hard panned is coming from the physical location of each speaker, and is immune to that. So it sounds better on more systems in more listening positions. Then, by keeping the in between things in the middle, when you're not in the listening sweet spot at least the centre things are all affected in the same way and so maintain a unified quality.

The only time I think hard panning can be distracting to a listener is with headphones. But even then room sound/ reverb can go a long way.

[Elessar [Sly]]

This thread has great feedback in it! Some really great info and experiences. Thanks guys!