How to record a FULL RANGE guitar sound?

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by jclark5093

The Blues Jr makes big sound in the room. Guess it's a lively room as Darryl Ramm suggested. Even with mic'ing the room, or using the A room in my local studio, or recording at a venue in a hall (lively room on purpose, no?) I don't seem to be able to capture the BIGNESS of the single guitar amp, because of 1) the SPL which doesn't translate well, mixed or not, and 2) some of the experience of the music is not audible - that part is difficult to reproduce even for cinema - took a long time before anyone figured that one out!

I'd say put up an omni pattern mic as a room mic a few feet back from the amp. Also try an RE20 on the amp itself.

What you really need to do is to put on a pair of headphones and walk around with the mic while the guitarist is playing. Listening on the cans as you move around with the mic will tell you where you'll get the sound you want. Also do the same thing with positioning the mic at the amp. Micing the edge of the cone will give you a different sound than micing the center.

[blackmacdaddy]

For a big full guitar sound: The HOLY GRAIL of multi miked, room mics & multi amp setups + DI is Sound Radix's AutoAlign plugin.

It fixes all phase issues and makes all of your sources work together.

Auto Align is the greatest thing ever for Guitar & Bass with a DI or multi mic/multi amp situations. It is so audible (when you A/B it) you'll be shocked.

As a guitar player, AutoAlign is a bigger game changer than Waves L1 was back in '92.

When you pull up your own older sessions (from before AAlign existed) and you put it on the guitar tracks, you may cry. Indispensable.

[64GTOBOY]

The lower the frequency the larger the waveform the farther from the source the mic needs to be to capture it. Even a small diameter condenser 4-8 feet away is going to give you more lows to work with(along with some room sound of course). I would do as musicman suggests using headphones with a close mic and a condenser(preferably one without a hyped top or middle) aimed straight at the speaker moving the room mic to get as close as possible to the sound you want. I agree that psychoacoustic plugins such as Rbass and RenAxx can definitely help, as would the right compressor. Also I might mention that if you are listening in front of near fields when mixing,you may be too close to them to hear the lower frequencies that are there. Try listening from the next room and see if it sounds closer to what you heard when tracking.

[64GTOBOY]

I should add that I find recording with a ribbon gives me a warm, semi -dark midrange-y tone , but not a bunch of low frequency

[QuikDraw]

Just out of curiosity, have you tried playing back your recording in the same room that you recorded in? Place the monitor speakers in the same position and direction as the guitar amp during recording, and play it back at the same volume it was played live. How does it sound in that situation?

The point is, you might have already captured the performance, and what you're missing is the acoustic listening environment that greatly affects what you hear and feel.

Now, if it sounds right only when played back in the same environment as the recording, I'm not sure how you would emulate that so it translates the same feel in other environments.

[Southsidemusic]

GTO - Agree. A Coles will do a great job here in front. Not too close though.

[Ru_C]

Originally Posted by jclark5093

So I tracked a band recently that is comprised of 2 people. A drummer, and a guitarist/singer. He plays a strat through a fender blues jr playing hendrix-y bluesy stuff mixed with some prince funk. He fills the room with the full range of the guitar, and doesn't need a bass. It works in a room. I attended a couple rehearsals to understand their sound.


In the recordings, the guitars don't sound so full. They take up the frequency space that electric guitars "should" take in a full band (250-8k or so). I want to get the mix to include the frequencies down to 80Hz that I heard in the room when tracking.

I do have a DI track so I can reamp, use parallel tracks for amp sims, etc etc. So all is not lost.

But WHAT could even be done, what technique, to get the depth of a full human ear experience but in an ITB mixing situation? He used an EQ pedal to boost the lows all the way down to 80 curved down from the left to flat on the right. That's how he gets his sound to begin with. I've never been put in the position to capture something like that before, so I close mic'ed the cab with a ribbon and an off axis 58 (with the grill removed). They sound GREAT but they don't sound like what I hear in the room.

Any advice (and scolding) are welcome and appreciated!!

It might sound counterintuitive, but try placing a mic in the *back* of a combo amp & feeding that into the front facing mic blend (you will most likely have to reverse the phase of this mic too, much like miking a snare top & bottom). It a weird trick I found works when miking up VOX AC30's etc

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Ru_C

It might sound counterintuitive, but try placing a mic in the *back* of a combo amp & feeding that into the front facing mic blend (you will most likely have to reverse the phase of this mic too, much like miking a snare top & bottom). It a weird trick I found works when miking up VOX AC30's etc

That is a totally different sound and can really add something to a guitar's sound. It won't work though with a closed back amp/cab