Miking my new amp

BroKen_H

BroKen_H

Re-member
Okay. Got the Vox AC15. Got the Les Paul. I'm getting some KILLER tones out of the pair (and with the other guitars in the stable). Overcame the new buzzes and rattles that came with a louder amplifier.

But when I point the 57 at the speaker (at any angle, distance and position) it sounds like I've left the high pass on. I could get the sounds that were coming out of my Cube to sound pretty much like they came out of the amp, but just switching the amp out has given me this new problem. Best sound on the Cube was straight on about 1/2"-1" left of the cap. In the Vox, I can't see the speaker, but I'm pretty sure it's in the middle where the cloth is not backed by solid wood. I've tried 1/2 inch increments all along the vertical center. Should I be aiming higher or lower with this louder amp? Should I pull the mike back from the grill? Should I be doing more than about 10 degrees axis? I've experimented and everything I've tried sounds mediocre to awful.

Any help or article links or whatever would be greatly appreciated. In the mean while, I just keep experimenting (and yes, I understand that's important, but I'm a bit lost and confused, thank you very much).
 
Get one of those little pocket-sized LED flashlights, turn it on and press it right up against the grille cloth. That should allow you to see the main parts of the speaker, so you can make a better judgement about where you're putting the mic.

Start with the mic on-axis, about where the dust cap meets the cone. See how that sounds and adjust from there. Might need to move towards the center for brighter tones, towards the edge for darker tones. I haven't ever had much benefit from going off-axis with a mic on a speaker. I'd say forget that for now just to remove one more variable from the equation.
 
Congrats on the new amp! ^^^ That's what I'd do too B_H. You're just going to have to play around with all the variables until you get the hang of working with a new amp--mic placement, amp eq, guitar settings, etc. Sounds like you've got a systematic approach. Keep working it and you'll get there.

If you've got some long cables and can get the amp out the room where you are listening, I'd suggest it. That way you are hearing what the microphone hears, and listening to the guitar in the mix through your monitors. Not everybody agrees with this approach, but many who don't haven't tried it. I find it reduces drastically the amount of time it takes to dial in a tone, and gives me better results. YMMV.

Post some tones. Let's hear it! I'm sure they would welcome you over on the New Tone Thread. There's also this: Nola's thread about small amp tone.
 
Large walk in close is only 4' away from where the amp sits. I guess it's time to kick all the extra mike stands and guitar cases out of the closet and see if I can use that space a bit. My cables are plenty long to get it a ways into the room. Thanks for the tip! Been recording with the Pro380s on to keep the amp from being so loud it drives me out of the studio. Can't imagine trying to record a Marshall stack...

I watched the entire Tom Petty Chasing Down A Dream video (4 1/2 hours on Netflix) the other day and was surprised to see that their sound (at least live) was all Vox. Guess I made a good choice. :)
 
Actually, a closet is probably the worst place to put the amp. Is there a hallway outside your recording room?
 
Okay, I'm shooting the mike STRAIGHT (no axis, no tilt) and it's overpowering and sounds fizzy. Backed off two inches and it sounds better, but still not the tone that's coming out of the speaker. Wider and wider adds a bit of low end, so I guess that's the right direction. Is there a serious difference as the Celestion breaks in? Wondering if part of the problem is a stiff speaker. Should I try my condenser? Point it near the edge of the cap and the 57 near the center of the cone and work from there? or vice versa...too many options.
I've got the amp and mike off the floor on a cabinet (floor is carpeted, so I didn't want to track from there. Is this correct? Maybe I'll try it on the floor in the closet. :)
Just trying to get a Clue...Mr. Vox with a 57 on the floor in the closet.
 
Closet has no clothes and is 7.5'H x 6 x 10. I've recorded well in smaller spaces. I could put up some gobos if necessary for absorption, but the hall is only about 5' long and leads into cavernous open concept living/dining/kitchen area with vaulted ceilings and 5 other house members...where it's rarely quiet.
 
Since you've got it set up in the closet, might as well experiment and see what you can make of it. What I've found is that close miking with a dynamic mic is pretty forgiving of room problems. However, in a closet the sound waves have nowhere to go but right back at your mic. I've tried using a closet as an amp room but got poor results. Even a hallway works better, especially if you point the amp down the length of the hall to avoid having hard surfaces close to the amp and angled in a way that reflects sound back to the mic. My standard setup uses an adjoining bedroom for the amp.

You have to accept that the mic is hearing the amp differently than what you hear in the room. Personally, I would put the amp's room tone out of my mind and concentrate on getting something usable through the mic. However, if you want to track a tone that is closer to what you hear in the room, you're going to need a good-sounding room and some kind of distant mic instead of, or in addition to the close mic. If you go with a two-mic setup, you'll need to sort out the phase issues. That's a lot of trial and error where small changes in the position of the two mics make a big difference.

hallway leads into cavernous open concept living/dining/kitchen area with vaulted ceilings...
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Actually that sounds perfect. I'll sometimes park my amp at the top of a stair that leads into a space just like you describe.

...and 5 other house members...where it's rarely quiet.
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That part might not be so perfect!
 
Yeah, the space would be wicked to work in, I get one day a week off when my wife's not home. Meaning I'd have to drag everything out, set it all up, play for maybe 3 hours and then pack it all back in. I'd like something a bit more permanent. ($20k plan in the works to get my studio space out of the house...at my wife's insistence. :)) A few less set backs would really help. Spider bite, step daughter's family moving in (and associated car breakdowns, moving expenses, etc. that I'm having to cover) plus my wife deciding she needed a new car, her medical expenses...it's all slowing me down a bit financially, but I guess no one gets 100% what they want when they want it. I just don't want to wake up 10 years from now and not have this accomplished and realize my ears are crap and it's all been wasted...
 
I'd stick with just the '57 for now. If you can't get a good recorded tone with that mic, then adding a condenser isn't going to help. The SM7 is a great tool for this job, and as long as it's not damaged or defective, you should be able to coax a satisfactory tone out of it. Once you get something you like with that mic, then it'll be time to experiment with other mics. Multiple mics on an amp is surprisingly complicated in my experience. I tend to never do it.

Since you're having issues with too little low end, I'd suggest keeping the mic right up against the grille cloth (well, maybe not actually touching it, but really close). Like you've already noted, moving it away from the center of the cone and towards the edge of the speaker attenuates the highs. And backing the mic away from the grille will reduce proximity effect and consequently the low end. The Vox AC line are pretty bright and chimey amps, so your sweet spot is probably not going to be near the center of the cone.

If you're overloading something, it's almost certainly not the mic. An SM57 can handle insane SPL. You might need a pad for your preamp, or at least to keep the gain pretty low if you're recording a raging amplifier.

Stiff speaker might have a little to do with it, but you should still be able to get great tones as the speaker breaks in. As Robus mentioned, the room sound will mislead you as you try to get a good recorded tone. I struggled for months with my Marshall because it sounded so giant in the room, and so wimpy when recorded. I had to do some counter-intuitive things that sounded like crap in the room, but translated into a really great recorded tone. Keep experimenting. Post some results in the tone thread, those fellas will help steer you right. I tried on your last post in there, but you'd already taken it down before I got a chance.
 
Yeah, the file I tried to post up was a zip with 3 files in it and I didn't think anyone was going to look at it for that reason after 2 days, so I tried to link to three files in a drop box directory and it wouldn't work, so I just pulled it down till I could figure something better. Three individual links in a post is my next try. I'll get that up soon.
 
First, stick your ear approximately where you are sticking the mic. You might find that the mic IS picking up what is coming out of the speaker where you are placing the mic.

Second, if the sound is too thin, pointing the mic at the center of the speaker is the worst thing to do. The center will be the brightest place, the sound will get darker as you move it towards the edge.

Third. Forget what it sounds like in the room. Adjust the tone of the amp so that it sounds good at the microphone. For recording, you are the only one that might hear what the amp sounds like in the room. Everyone else, including you, will be listening to that performance through the mic. Same basic principal goes for live. Unless you are playing a very, very small place, the audience will be listening to your amp through the mic, and you might as well. (assuming it's in the monitors)

Also, open backed cabinets have sound coming from the back as well, which will be part of what you hear in the room.
 
Tadpui said:
If you're overloading something, it's almost certainly not the mic. An SM57 can handle insane SPL. You might need a pad for your preamp, or at least to keep the gain pretty low if you're recording a raging amplifier.
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I overloaded my 57 with too much proximity chuff from a Fender Twin. Sounded terrible. Mids and upper mids with high SPL don't cause my 57 to break a sweat, but some high volume low end heavy clean tones, especially when a lot of air is being pushed causes it to distort badly. Might be specific to my mic of course.

Just saying that although it may be unlikely, it certainly happens.



Broken_H, I use an AC15 to record pretty frequently. As has already been suggested, I use a little LED flashlight to show me where the speaker is. Works great. I tried a lot of different positions, but I find that I get the best tones with a 57 about 1 inch off the grill, at the cap edge, on axis. I like to combine this with a ribbon just past the cap edge on the cone, and again about 1 inch back from the grill (other side of the cap, opposite the 57). Again, on axis. The ribbon gives me a nice, even frequency response and the 57 gives some nice bite.

Also make sure that when you are finding your tone, that you have the speaker pointed at your ears. We tend to have the speaker pointed at our knee caps when we dial in a tone, and we don't realize just how bright it actually is.

Oh, I also find that I don't necessarily have to crank the amp up super loud to get what I think is a good sounding recorded tone. If it sounds great coming out of the amp at whatever volume you have found a pleasing tone at, you should be able to mic that and reproduce it.

Cheers man. Good luck!
 
Actually very helpful fish man! I've noticed that a lot of the best tones come when the volume is not nearly 11. I've got mine off the ground, but you're right about not facing my ears. Frustrating not to have actual tone controls on this little guy, but the tones you get with the boost are marvelous and so I'm not so worried! :)
I tried working a tone out on the treble pickup and then recording it off the rhythm pickup and it sounds better that way, so getting the tone right with my head in front of it is going to be key! I just have to sit in a chair to get my head there, so that should be easy (and kind of lazy :)).
 
BroKen_H said:
Yeah, the file I tried to post up was a zip with 3 files in it and I didn't think anyone was going to look at it for that reason after 2 days, so I tried to link to three files in a drop box directory and it wouldn't work, so I just pulled it down till I could figure something better. Three individual links in a post is my next try. I'll get that up soon.
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If I remember correctly, none of your links worked. I tried to listen to your clips and it was a no-go.

You've gotten some good advice in this thread. Follow it. You have to put in the work.
 
Is the amp spanking new off the floor, if so, then the amp will need a little break in time, especially the speaker. You'll notice a change in tone once the speaker has been broken in thus requiring a little mic tweaking to dial in your tone again.
 
The Good: I figured out what the odd overriding tone was...I had the mike too close to the grill and it was getting hit by the cloth. If I set the mic so much as an inch away from the speaker it sounds like I'm using a room mike. So I've got the distance dialed at about 3/8" from the grill where it doesn't get hit (and cause that shrill digital distortion type sound) and it doesn't sound like I've got the mike 5' away...My room acoustics are good for vocal and acoustic, can't see why this is happening.
The Bad: Clean tones with the tone cut at 3:00 (almost maxed) still sound way to bright in the box. I've got the thing sounding so dark in the room and yet it comes out past strat bright with the LP rhythm pickup and darkest tones. I've done due diligence to push the mike in 1/2" stages across the front of the speaker. Some sound "better" but nothing sounds good. Distorted sounds sound much less distorted recorded than what is coming out the speaker. Starting to think my 57s damaged. I may try the 2001 a foot or so out and see what it picks up. Maybe the answer is getting something to accurately pick up what I'm hearing.
The Ugly: My Hamer superstrat makes much better tones than the LP and is a lot easier to dial in on the amp (just almost any setting of the knobs sounds nice). I can get killer clean tones and killer dist tones out of the Hamer, but the LP is very elusive and the spectrum of where the knobs has to be to sound good is very narrow. The reason that's ugly...the LP is so much "crisper." I get great note separation and can hear every string in the chords.

This does not seem like it should be difficult. Put the mike in front of the amp. Get a decent sound to come out of the amp. Move the mike until the recorded signal sounds like the amplifier. That's what I do with vocal and acoustic. Strange to be so frustrated with this. Full on a week and I haven't gotten a single tone I'd want to share.

The other side of the coin: I can get great dist tones from both guitars in Amplitube on lots of different amps (they still need drastically different settings), but they all need the TS9 sim in front of the amp... Applying sim world to meat world, I may need to go find a TS9 and see if that helps.
 
I really doubt your mic is broken. It could be, but let's be real. A mic only picks up what it hears. Not what you hear, what it hears.What you hear in the room and what the mic hears 3/8 from the grill are two vastly different things. As you've learned, tiny little micro movements of the mic matter. The way I read your post, it all seems like inexperience and operator error to me, so keep working on it. A whole week is not enough time to master something you just started doing. You can't just throw a mic down and record killer tone. You have to learn your setup and variables. It could be your expectations are not lined up with what your equipment will actually deliver.
 
Thanks. Yeah, I'm not expecting to get great results in a week. Just thought with all the hours I've done there would be something usable. It's okay. I'm not throwing in the towel. It took me years to figure out how to get decent tones out of Amplitube and I had to modify the way I thought more than once. I'll keep pushing and trying. Today I took some time off that to record some acoustic and it came out nice. Sometimes you've just got to go back to something you can do well to get your motivation and inspiration going. I'll come back to the amp a little later. :)
 
I agree with what Greg said. Mic do fail, but the greater probability is that you haven't gotten the hang of miking this particular amp yet. Keep at it. Keep in mind, no amp does everything. Your AC-15 will have some great sounds and some crappy sounds in it too, like any amp. It's up to you to find and record the great sounds.
 
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