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rightbrainnow

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ok so today i did extensive experimentation with mic placement on electric guitar. i have a fender reverb deluxe that i like to crank both the volume and reverb on. im in a room with almost no sound absorbtion and sheetrock walls...the reflections make me cringe. ill be moving into another sound treated room in due time..however, i have some questions after doing my experimentation. i was double micing the speaker with a 57 and a bluebird. i usually backed the bluebird back further so it would pick up more of the ambience to make the sound, sound "big"...i flicked that phase reverse switch on the pre for the bluebird, and put the 57 at an angle about 1 once from the grill. i feel like i still had phasing issues...is it possible that there are so many reflections in the room that those are causing phasing as well? i mean parrallel walls...the whole deal. I wasnt too satisfied with how the guitar sounded, and i was running the mics through a sebatron vmp 4000 into cubase. When i move to a better room...can i expect a much better sound? Also, do you usually record an amp set like this within a large room, or do you record it in a smaller space that is sound treated...in other words..would it be a good idea to record an amp in a more dead and dry vocal booth?
 
It isn't great to use a lot of reverb going in IMO. I like adding reverb on the back side way better. If I were using a larger room for recording I would point the amp toward a corner. If you are getting phasing try moving the room mic just a but farther from the amp.
 
yea, i could kinda tell that the amp's reverb was getting in the way some...but i think fender's reverb sounds a lot better than cubase's
 
I like the spring reverb sound from Fender amps too. Sometimes I find the reverb itself causes some strange yet interesting almost out of phase sounds. To compensate for this I cut back on the reverb while recording to about half of what I use for normal playing then add a touch of delay in the mix. This brings the reverb back up without the "swishy" sound that recording lots of reverb on the way in often has.
 
If you've got one mic up close and another set back a ways, then you're likely to get some phase issues, regardless of whether you have the phase switch engaged.

What you need to do is either line up the wave forms in Cubase until the peaks and troughs match as perfectly as you can get them ... or you need to delay the room mic a little more ... closer to the 40 ms mark. Do it until you almost can hear it as a distinct echo (of the close mic track) ... do a highpass filter at about 200 hz, and then back it off in the mix. Try panning it way off to the left or right (for a sense of space), and you're done.

Don't overthink it. If it's (still) giving you headaches, then just ditch the room mic and go on with your life.
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Phasing is just a matter of time. What I mean by that is the time difference between the sorce and the mics. I play with the distance of the room mic til I get the two mics phasing close to the same time. It can take a while but eventually you can get them to work together. The lining up of the peaks in the software is a great way to fix the problem as long as the two mics aren't 180 out.
 
if you like the sound of the reverb on the fender, but want to control if after it has been tracked, try re-amping the recorded guitar back through the amp with more reverb on it. Put it on a new track and mix the two together.
 
brendandwyer said:
if you like the sound of the reverb on the fender, but want to control if after it has been tracked, try re-amping the recorded guitar back through the amp with more reverb on it. Put it on a new track and mix the two together.
Click to expand...

this sounds neat, but i dont exactly know what you mean...could you go into a little more detail please?
 
Sure. You record your guitar through your amp without reverb. Take the advice of the guys above and place the mic off axis from the speaker cone (between the cone and the metal edge of the speaker housing). Now, output this track via an aux output to your amplifier input. Now your amplifier is acting like a monitor. Place a microphone at a short distance from the amp, say a foot or so, and start messing with the reverb level. Record this output onto a new track. Now you have effectively created a dry recording of the guitar, and a wet (reamped) version. Mix the two against each other to achieve the ratio of dry/wet that you want. In this way, you don't have to comitt to an effect in the tracking stage and can alter it later without using plug ins or some other digital domain solution. its fun and works great on drums, vocals, pianos, a DI bass, etc.
 
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