El Borrachito
Premier Staff
Recording great sounding guitar tracks begins at the source. If what’s coming out of the amp sounds like a turd, then whatever you do to it from there, will be at best a shiny turd. There is a reason lots of bigshot record producers carry around lots of guitars and amps. Often Johnny Wanna-Be Rockstar (heretofore known as JWBRS) won’t have any idea what a good guitar sound is, let alone how to get it. Even if JWBRS’s stuff sounds pretty good on the gigs, there is no guarantee that it will translate in the studio. In fact, very often the best gear for gigs is not the best to record with and vice versa. If JWBRS is slow to learn this lesson it can make for a long day.
Another reason bigshot producers often have their own guitar and amp collections, is because the old adage “You can never have too many guitars” is absolutely true! Any decent guitar player can plug a guitar into an amp (not some Line 6 mission control POS, a real amp!) and in less than a minute dial in the best possible tone that combination can provide. If that doesn’t sound good to you and right for the song in question, try something else. Don’t waste half an hour messing around with mics and eq. You know it sucks. You don’t need to hear it through the monitors to know that. Keep trying combinations until you hear BAM! That’s it! That’s a great sound for this part on this song! Then mic it up and go. If you are spending 90% of your time just trying not to mess up what sounds good in the room, then you are probably making a good sounding recording.
So you have a workable sound coming out of the amp, now what? I will usually base my mic selection on the type of sound. For anything high-gain or fairly crunchy, a couple of 57s or some other dynamic will usually do the trick. If it’s a cleaner sound, I would start to consider some sort of condenser as long as the volume is reasonable. I used to have one of those Groove Tubes GT-1 mics. It was perhaps the grungiest sounding tube mike I’ve ever heard, but it was great for semi-clean, big shiny stuff. (ie. AC-30 up about half way) With crunchy stuff, I’ll usually do one of two things: Two 57s on one speaker or a 57 and a 609 or some sort of ribbon on the another. The trick with two 57s is to aim one straight on at the cone wherever sounds best. It’s trial and error. Sometimes I’ll put on headphones and find the spot where the idle noise of the amp sounds most natural. The second 57 needs to be placed at a 45˚ angle at the very edge of the speaker so it is pointing at the center. This mic will sound dark and gross by itself, but it will add girth when combined with the other mic and there will be no phase issues. Many times I have seen guys try to create the hugest sound ever by using multiple mics, on multiple amps, with lots of eq, and create a big phasey mess. I generally avoid using more than one amp at once for this reason. If I need to beef up a sound, I usually use a Sansamp (love that thing!) or plug-in. Ribbon mics can sound very cool, but be careful not to kill them with excessive volume. There are guys who swear by driving Beyer 160s to the edge of crapping out, which can sound cool, until they crap out. The 609 or a condenser is a nice compliment to a 57 especially on a semi-crunchy sound, since you can balance the roundness of the 609 with the edge of a 57.
My favorite mic preamp for almost any electric guitar is a Neve 1073. It’s not the most hi-fi preamp in the world, but it has that “Neve thing” -and that machete-like equalizer? Awesome! The Chameleon labs copy does a reasonable imitation for a fraction of the price of even any of the other knock-offs out there. In general, super clean hi-fi stuff tends to sound vibe-less on guitar. It’s nice to have a couple channels of “mojo” mic pres in addition to the nice high-end stuff.
Guitar players can go nuts with the Jimmy Page room mic thing the way drummers can go nuts with the Bonham thing, but if the room sounds cool, why not? Just put it on it’s own track in case it turns out to be less cool than you thought. You can always blast out into the room later too. How did we ever get by only having 24 tracks!
Plug-ins and modeling amps are an article unto themselves, but here are a few thoughts: They are very useful when time is tight, and you need to get all sorts of sounds quickly. The recall ability is also very handy. The trick to getting modeling plug-ins to sound as good as possible is own them all and use the best of each. If I’m doing a high-gain thing I may reamp it later. Using some dinky boxy little amp (or my buddy the Sansamp) combined with the plug-in gives it the midrange punch plug-ins alone often lack. In my estimation no one has come close tp capturing the speaker-microphone interaction adequately yet. I also treat virtual amps the same way I would a real amp as far as pedals go. In other words I’ll drive them with pedals and use the same sorts of combinations I would with a real amp. All this works great for TV or stuff where time is tight, but if it's a record I'll fire up the amps. If I get crappy guitar tracks to mix I won’t hesitate to beef them up with plug-ins and reamping. Sometimes just running the track through the speaker section of a modeler can do wonders.
Oh yeah, make sure JWBRS tunes up every once in a while too!
Another reason bigshot producers often have their own guitar and amp collections, is because the old adage “You can never have too many guitars” is absolutely true! Any decent guitar player can plug a guitar into an amp (not some Line 6 mission control POS, a real amp!) and in less than a minute dial in the best possible tone that combination can provide. If that doesn’t sound good to you and right for the song in question, try something else. Don’t waste half an hour messing around with mics and eq. You know it sucks. You don’t need to hear it through the monitors to know that. Keep trying combinations until you hear BAM! That’s it! That’s a great sound for this part on this song! Then mic it up and go. If you are spending 90% of your time just trying not to mess up what sounds good in the room, then you are probably making a good sounding recording.
So you have a workable sound coming out of the amp, now what? I will usually base my mic selection on the type of sound. For anything high-gain or fairly crunchy, a couple of 57s or some other dynamic will usually do the trick. If it’s a cleaner sound, I would start to consider some sort of condenser as long as the volume is reasonable. I used to have one of those Groove Tubes GT-1 mics. It was perhaps the grungiest sounding tube mike I’ve ever heard, but it was great for semi-clean, big shiny stuff. (ie. AC-30 up about half way) With crunchy stuff, I’ll usually do one of two things: Two 57s on one speaker or a 57 and a 609 or some sort of ribbon on the another. The trick with two 57s is to aim one straight on at the cone wherever sounds best. It’s trial and error. Sometimes I’ll put on headphones and find the spot where the idle noise of the amp sounds most natural. The second 57 needs to be placed at a 45˚ angle at the very edge of the speaker so it is pointing at the center. This mic will sound dark and gross by itself, but it will add girth when combined with the other mic and there will be no phase issues. Many times I have seen guys try to create the hugest sound ever by using multiple mics, on multiple amps, with lots of eq, and create a big phasey mess. I generally avoid using more than one amp at once for this reason. If I need to beef up a sound, I usually use a Sansamp (love that thing!) or plug-in. Ribbon mics can sound very cool, but be careful not to kill them with excessive volume. There are guys who swear by driving Beyer 160s to the edge of crapping out, which can sound cool, until they crap out. The 609 or a condenser is a nice compliment to a 57 especially on a semi-crunchy sound, since you can balance the roundness of the 609 with the edge of a 57.
My favorite mic preamp for almost any electric guitar is a Neve 1073. It’s not the most hi-fi preamp in the world, but it has that “Neve thing” -and that machete-like equalizer? Awesome! The Chameleon labs copy does a reasonable imitation for a fraction of the price of even any of the other knock-offs out there. In general, super clean hi-fi stuff tends to sound vibe-less on guitar. It’s nice to have a couple channels of “mojo” mic pres in addition to the nice high-end stuff.
Guitar players can go nuts with the Jimmy Page room mic thing the way drummers can go nuts with the Bonham thing, but if the room sounds cool, why not? Just put it on it’s own track in case it turns out to be less cool than you thought. You can always blast out into the room later too. How did we ever get by only having 24 tracks!
Plug-ins and modeling amps are an article unto themselves, but here are a few thoughts: They are very useful when time is tight, and you need to get all sorts of sounds quickly. The recall ability is also very handy. The trick to getting modeling plug-ins to sound as good as possible is own them all and use the best of each. If I’m doing a high-gain thing I may reamp it later. Using some dinky boxy little amp (or my buddy the Sansamp) combined with the plug-in gives it the midrange punch plug-ins alone often lack. In my estimation no one has come close tp capturing the speaker-microphone interaction adequately yet. I also treat virtual amps the same way I would a real amp as far as pedals go. In other words I’ll drive them with pedals and use the same sorts of combinations I would with a real amp. All this works great for TV or stuff where time is tight, but if it's a record I'll fire up the amps. If I get crappy guitar tracks to mix I won’t hesitate to beef them up with plug-ins and reamping. Sometimes just running the track through the speaker section of a modeler can do wonders.
Oh yeah, make sure JWBRS tunes up every once in a while too!
Last edited:
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facepalm
