Micing Guitar Cabs/Dull Tone

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Bad.Seed

Bad.Seed

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I've recently started dabbling in home recording. I have a full live drum recording rig thatI've actually gotten to sound pretty damn good.
For bass, I just use my sansamp or Darkglass B7k straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2
For guitars, I've been using a method I saw on Spectre's youtube page, where he uses an sm57 to mic one speaker on the cone, and an Audix d2 to mic the dust cap, giving a dark/bright mix.

So far, I haven't been all that pleased with the results. I feel as if the tone is kind of dull. I like my tones pretty bright and middy, especially for modern stuff, and it just seems like the dry signal from the cab is kind of dark/dull and uninspiring, even when I have the mids and highs cranked pretty high. The cab I've been using is my Splawn straight 4x12 with a v30/k100 x pattern mix.

Any tips on getting a livelier or brighter sound on the way in?
 
Honestly, I’d just fiddle with one mic for a bit. One mic can be tricky enough when your first learning how to mic an amp. I’d start with the sm57 on one of the V30s. A good starting point is on axis with the 57 pointed where the dustcap and cone meet and about 1” back. With a 57 on a V30, I almost always end up somewhere within a 1/2” left or right of that spot and between 1”-1.5” back.

I usually adjust left & right first to find the best top end balance without fizz. Then I adjust the distance to get the balance of low end and openness I want. If I can’t get a bright and lively tone within that range, I go back to the amp.

I take the approach of getting the amp sounding “good” in the room. However, the room you’re in can affect what you hear, so you’ll need to learn your room too. For example, I find I usually end up needing to dial-in the amp a little brighter than I would if I was strictly going off in room sound.

Anyway, I hope that helps some. Learning to mic is both frustrating and rewarding lol.
 
+1 on what that guy said. that method works for me as well.
 
yeah man, Just start moving the mic around. It helps if you have a long enough headphone cable that cut out enough noise where you can have someone play while you listen as you move the mic.

If you can't do that, then just move it, record a clip, see how you like it and wash/rinse/repeat.
 
Bad.Seed":3irwsxjw said:
...sm57 to mic one speaker on the cone, and an Audix d2 to mic the dust cap...
Click to expand...
Maybe try it the other way around. Put the 57 on the dust cap and then put the D2 towards the speaker's outer edge.
 
It's trial and error, pure and simple. When we did the Scumback vs Emi/Celestion/etc recordings in 2005, we had an experienced engineer telling us what to try. We wound up moving each SM57 about six times on each speaker to get the optimal tone for each one.

So not only is it mic dependent, it's also speaker dependent. What we found is that there is no one position where you can set it and forget it for different speakers.

So that means you should be trying a 1/2 dozen placements from around 1 - 1.5" different across the cone total, not 1-1.5" different from each other. The most consistent tone was with the SM57 angled at around 45 degrees, with the mic head even with the outside edge of the speaker doping, aimed towards the center dust cap...OR A VARIATION OF THAT.

Good luck!

Jim
 
Shavering is and old school technique I learned way back in the 80s. Please note,I am an old man who learned this working in a studio a long time ago and refuses to change his ways....so I am sure there are probably better ways to record now.

With the amp on,but with no signal input to it,there is just the amps hiss coming from the speaker. You then move the mic around until the hiss is as loud as you can get it in your headphones/monitors.

Just found this by googling shavering.


https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/shavering/
 
Just start with a single SM57. If you can’t find the spot to make that sound good, something else is up, tbh.
 
rottingcorpse":2w5un3bj said:
Shavering is and old school technique I learned way back in the 80s. Please note,I am an old man who learned this working in a studio a long time ago and refuses to change his ways....so I am sure there are probably better ways to record now.

With the amp on,but with no signal input to it,there is just the amps hiss coming from the speaker. You then move the mic around until the hiss is as loud as you can get it in your headphones/monitors.

Just found this by googling shavering.


https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/shavering/
Click to expand...
I do this quite frequently as well, so maybe i’m old too :lol: :LOL:. I think it works great. Some folks will do something similar by feeding some pink noise into the fx because it’s full frequency. Then others say they like to feed it through the amp input to get the preamp in there. I tried it in the fx loop once years ago, but I couldn’t tell you if I found it any better. If I do it, I just use the amp hiss since it’s easier.
 
you could always brighten everything up in post mixing too, i find its easier to brighten up something rather than trying to take out top end which usually has unremovable fizz to go with it. a couple db between 2.5-4khz will brighten everything right up
 
I wouldn't go overboard on the mids either, personally. Too much mids in modern tones just clash with the vocals and can sound cloudy/stuffy.

I guess it depends on what "modern tones" you're going after. You don't need to go overboard either, but are you going for an Andy Sneap/Colin Richardson-ish kinda tone, or are you going for something else? Given that you are using Glenn Fricker method, isn't he a big fan of the Clayman sound? That's definitely not a mid-focused tone at all.
 
Thanks for the tips, folks. I'm hoping to have some time to mess around with everything tonight. Band was on the road for a while, and I had some catching up to do once I got home.

I've gotten my drum sounds pretty much right where I want them for raws, which has actually surprised me, as I figured getting good guitar tones would come more easily! Haha
 
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