Recording 4 x 12 distorted

D

dorwardpaul

New member
Hey Guys,

First post here :)

I am in to recording i have a carvin 4 x 12 cab and a sure Sm57

I get so much thud and low top end even when it sounds decent in the room - i always have to eq post recording.

I have tweaked the amps eq and got it to sound good on play back, but when you go and listen to the actual live sound in sounds awful - super high thin tinny just awful .

So my question is this - do i get a good live sound then mic it up and polish it with eq in the mix . . or use an awful live sound the records well with a flat eq...

signal path is this for a good live sound

guitar - Boss NS2 - overdrive pedal - compressor - front of amp - amp eq settings presence 7, treble 7, mid 5, bass 6.5, drive 7 - G system in loop with minimal effects slight reverb and delay and minimal eq tweets, no frequency adjusted more than 4DB up or down - cab mic'd with a sure SM57 1.5 inchs from the cloth on outer edge of dust cap - m audio mbox mic pre - garage band.. hopefully i have attached my eq settings in garage band..

the garage band eq I'm notching out below about 80z - another big scoop from 160 is t 400 is as i get awful cardboard type booming sound..

Any help tips - advice much much appreciated

Thanks all
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2015-02-28 at 17.09.43.png
    Screen Shot 2015-02-28 at 17.09.43.png
    627.7 KB · Views: 276
Keep in mind when pointing a 57 at the cone, you are getting just one speaker up close and personal. The sound in the room is the cab, all 4 speakers, the ambiance and room characteristics. Plus you get that thump in the chest excitement of a 4x12 pumping.

In other words when you dial in a good guitar tone you are not hearing what the mic hears.

You might want to try the two mic technique. One condenser and the 57.

Bottom line, you gotta play around with stuff to get a good sound to "tape"

Something else to consider, what monitors are you using for playback, and what does the room sound like.
 
dorwardpaul said:
Any help tips - advice much much appreciated
Click to expand...

Move the mic.
Try a different mic.
Adjust your amp.
Try different speakers.

Rolling off a bit of low-end is not unusual, or boosting a touch in the upper mids....but if you have to go dramatic with EQ...then some of the above is not right.
 
Good advice from RFR & Miro, only I'd keep trying the single mic until I got what I wanted in the daw...

What amp are you using??? I've found that with the presence & treble up that high on my amps, the captured sound is a little harsh, with not much bottom end...

Volume is your friend too, lower the pre-amp gain & get a little air moving through your speakers...You'll often use a lot less gain for recordings than you'd think...
 
When placing the mic, pointing it at the center of the speaker cone will be bright sounding. As you move the mic towards the edge of the speaker, the sound will get darker.

From what you are describing, it sounds like you pointed the mic at the center of the cabinet, instead of at any of the speakers. If you want to get the sound of the whole cabinet in the room, you need to back the mic up a few feet. But that will tend to sound thin and mid-rangey.
 
Here is something else to consider outside of the technical recording aspects.

I am assuming you are primarily a guitar player.

Often times a guitar player when playing alone, will "compensate" for the rest of the band not being there.
In other words, when dialing in the tone they will put in a bass player, and drummer. All that low frequency stuff. Your ear wants to hear the rest of the band.
However in an actual band setting and in recording that tone you so carefully dialed in now turns to woofy bottom end mush.

Once I recorded this led zeppelin tribute band. They were very good and had toured the country. Now they were recording some solo material.
They knew what they were doing and self produced. I was just the engineer and did as I was told. In the control room, I was baffled. How could a guitar player make a Les Paul and a Marshall sound so thin????? However when we were done tracking and mixed everything it sounded fat rich and quite thick.
The moral of the story is this.

That killer guitar tone you think you have, may not be the actual tone that works in the mix.

Something to think about.
 
Last edited:
Thanks so much guys for quick responses...

Im close mic'ing the SM57 on the upper right cone of the 4 x 12 - i have mic'd all 4 individually and tis cone has the brightest sound of the 4 of them . .

i have a condesnor mic which i will hook up as well as the 57 and blend to see how that goes..
 
heres an audio example with the eq settings i posted earlier - not to woofy or too thin ?

but non the less eq'd

feels like fixing in the mix which i understand is a last resort - or would you say just adding a bit of polish and that is ok -

i just want to get it right :)
 

Attachments

  • Untitled - 01:03:2015 11.20.mp3
    1.6 MB · Views: 36
Guitar sounds pretty good......now you just need to fix the rest of the mix.:D
 
Now that I'm actually looking at the EQ, you really aren't doing much. You have effectively used a high pass filter at 100hz, which isn't unusual, dipped the mud at 250hz, added a little midrange and brightness. None of this is extreme.

The only goofy thing about it is that you are using a graphic EQ instead of a parametric EQ for this. A graphic EQ is not very precise. A parametric EQ is a scalpel, while a graphic EQ is a machete.

You need to add a bunch of compression to the bass, so the finger slapping doesn't jump out like that. Or maybe back off the 3k and up range to take the harshness out of it.
 
Yeah, nothing about the guitars sounds too bad to me here. A bit 80s, but not in a bad way. The rest of the mix could use some work and a bit more time balancing the overall levels would help a lot.

Playing's pretty good too, by the way. :)
 
Have you tried moving the amp around in your room?

Is the room treated at all?

Are the walls all perpendicular to each other?

Depending on the answers to these questions...chances could be fairly good that you are setting the mic in an area of phase cancellation and then listening to the recording somewhere else in the room. That could easily result in attenuated frequencies in your recordings even though it sounds great to your ear. I'm guessing, because it's a heavy cabinet, that you don't move it much.

I pasted this here from another thread and edited it to make sense in this thread. It could help a lot for you to understand your room.

"Listening to a lo-freq generated tone and walking around in your room is free and it illustrates the issue of resonate peaks and phase cancellation to people. You can almost "see" the standing waves and resonate peaks when you walk through them. Without spending a dime....putting the mic outside of a resonate peak is going to go a certain way to managing problem frequencies when recording. It's harder find an ideal mic placement as the room gets smaller...but worth considering in a larger space where you have more options for mic placement...and more reflective surfaces.

In my untreated room (in the process of getting there) there is a 32" difference between the resonate peak and the node of phase cancellation along the long wall...and that's just considering lateral movement. The potential amplitude differential of 300hz, depending on height, azimuth, and x/y lateral position is quite stunning. Turning your head changes everything. Bobbing your head up and down changes everything. At the end of doing this is it's pretty hard NOT to see mic placement as having a large impact on tone in an untreated room.

My current room has just been converted from an office. I'm about to spend a small wad of money on treatments myself (Owens Corning 703 and other building materials). Strategically placed absorbent wall panels and bass traps are going to go a long way in this room to deal with its resonate peaks. I'm curious afterwards how critical mic placement and azimuth angle are going to be.

Right now, in my room, mic placement makes a night and day difference. I don't have a db meter, but moving 32", I'd guess it was a 15db difference at 300hz and a fair volume.

When you can identify where the standing waves are in your own room you still wont be able to perfectly "see" what's happening because the space you're in is three dimensional. Floor and ceiling play the same role as walls. What you WILL know is about how far to move a mic stand to get a fundamentally different result. In this currently stupid room, for lo-mid control, the sweet spot is 16" from a bad spot. Knowing this adds a degree of control that before...I didn't know I had.

After the treatments I believe that my 16" mic movement position will still exist for 300hz and there will still be mic placements considerations. I just expect the amplitude difference to be quite a bit less for a lot of frequencies. I'm going to be guessing about the position of each panel but I'm pretty sure that where precisely to mount them will involve doing more of this right along the walls of this room."

Here is an online tone generator that is perfect for this.

Online Tone Generator - Free, Simple and Easy to Use.
 
Last edited:
miroslav said:
He would have to stop playing and put down the guitar.

:p

Couldn't help myself...
Click to expand...

Na...he could put it on rollers and kick it around. Better yet...he could put in rollers, chain himself to it, drag it around, and kill two birds with one stone...maybe three. :)

The guy who is owner/engineer of "Amplified Wax", probably Spokane's best recording studio, made a rack that he sets on the floor in front of an amp. He can move a mic back and forth, up and down, and he can turn it by mean of cables attached to levers when he's sitting in the control room. He swears by it. I did the tone generator experiments after talking with him and seeing that thing.
 
StuGort said:
Na...he could put it on rollers and kick it around. Better yet...he could put in rollers, chain himself to it, drag it around, and kill two birds with one stone...maybe three. :)

The guy who is owner/engineer of "Amplified Wax", probably Spokane's best recording studio, made a rack that he sets on the floor in front of an amp. He can move a mic back and forth, up and down, and he can turn it by mean of cables attached to levers when he's sitting in the control room. He swears by it. I did the tone generator experiments after talking with him and seeing that thing.
Click to expand...

He must have a long ground wire down his pants to be able to do that. :laughings:
 
...and talcum powder. Don't forget the talcum powder! Keeps the castors clean and easy to move without squeaking (among other things)... :laughings:
 
Hey guys,

Some again very great response's - over the last couple of days where time has allowed i have been moving the cab around and the mic placement etc...

One of the issues must have been i had the cabinet against a flat wall and it was facing another flat wall so perhaps direct reflections back at the mic ? ?

I have now moved it around the room a bit and found similar problems - so a long story short moved it to another room (which is actual smaller) but it about 3 feet from the wall at a jaunty angle so not parallel - result better !

I also added a second mic - i tried a condenser but i only had one of those cheap BM-500 things which sounded ok but lacked clarity so i just added a second SM57 to opposite (diagonal) cones.. again adds a more full sound..

i have also tweaked the eq in my floor unit ( TC G system and cut everything below 63hz) - big difference here

so with all of the above i now have an eq that looks very different . .

however i still get a bit of boxiness (hard to describe) tends to go with a dip of 3db at approx 250 hz

The 80's guitar sound although 80's and totally dated is exactly what i was after ha ha - 80's metal is going to rise again just need to be ready :)

ill post my eq and another sound clip if you have time to review -

again much appreciated help - this is probably the only forum that has ever been productive lol
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top