Recording Heavy Metal Guitars?

Seventh Son said:
So, you are saying, IF the speaker, or amp, or both, are crap, THEN you will get fizz from close-miking. Fair enough. But what if both amp and speaker are not crap, but you still get fizz? Then what? Regarding the amp, I've tried the DSL15C, the DSL20CR, and the 6100LM. You could potentially find fault with the DSLs, but the 6100LM was at one point Marshall's flagship and the amp Jim Marshall called the best amp Marshall has ever built. Hyperbole aside, the 6100LM is a pro-level amp, no matter how you look at it. Many of the guys over at Marshallforum.com swear by it. On the subject of speakers, my DSL15C and DSL20CR are equipped with the Vintage 30 and G12T-75, respectively, and my MX112 cab has a Vintage 30 in it. In addition, I have also tried the Seventy 80 and the G12E-60 that the DSLs came with stock. Again, you could pick on the stock speakers, but the Vintage 30 and G12T-75 are some of the best standard guitar speakers money can buy. What to make of it now?
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Well! What can one say? If you are confident both the amplifier and speaker give a good sound and the microphone is ok there has to be another factor causing the fizz because as others have stated, a '57 on or about the speaker fret is how 90% of guitar amp recordings are made. The technique is also common for PA repro.

Are your monitors or headphones a bit shrill? You have to be doing something 'wrong' IMHO.

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
It is instructive to stand next to a 240W 4x12 with deffs on whilst someone gives it very large with a 200W amplifier as I have done (but not for long!) You can hear the cab grunting and groaning, sounds you don't hear in the room consiously or via a mic.



Dave.
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No clue what a deffy is, but yeah. Like using a bunch of 10incher's in a bass cabinet. Torture the thing. Try to make it levitate.
 
ecc83 said:
Well! What can one say? If you are confident both the amplifier and speaker give a good sound and the microphone is ok there has to be another factor causing the fizz because as others have stated, a '57 on or about the speaker fret is how 90% of guitar amp recordings are made. The technique is also common for PA repro.

Are your monitors or headphones a bit shrill? You have to be doing something 'wrong' IMHO.

Dave.
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My monitors, JBL LSR305, are praised as being fairly flat. Not shrill at all. The headphones have a touch more presence, but nothing serious, and I am also always using reference tracks when using headphones, so that I can compare the midrange in my recordings to a base tone that I like.
 
ecc83 said:
Not "deffy" (that's me!) 'deffs'..ear defenders.

Dave.
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It may be "instructive" to stand next to a very loud cabinet, but what is the point of it if it's not something that the microphone hears? Unless this has a practically relevant effect on the recording, it is irrelevant for recording purposes.
 
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Seventh Son said:
It may be "instructive" to stand next to a very loud cabinet, but what it the point of it if it's not something that the microphone hears? Unless this has a practically relevant effect on the recording, it is irrelevant for recording purposes.
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"Instructive" in the sense that cabinet materials were being discussed.

Dave.
 
Here are some tracks for you guys to dissect. DSL15C with MX112 (both with Vintage 30s), two SM57s (one at cap edge, the other 6 feet away, chest height, pointing straight ahead in the direction of the amp), all EQ at noon, volume on 3, Ultra Gain channel gain at 3, played through a Dave Murray strat with DiMarzio Super Distortions, PreSonus Firestudio Mobile interface, uploaded to Soundcloud using the iTunes Plus 256 kBit/s resolution setting.

Close mic cap edge 1 inch off grille - straight by Seventh Son | Free Listening on SoundCloud

Distant mic 6 feet chest height - straight by Seventh Son | Free Listening on SoundCloud

Close mic and distant mic together by Seventh Son | Free Listening on SoundCloud
 
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aAre you trying for more separation between the chords? I am thinking after the strike is where the fizz happens in the negative resonant space.

Where is the HPF and LPF at?

Try this. Ride the track with a gate and clamp down on it. Use the gate to add stop and separation. fast attack. Attenuate -10-15 only or so. Get the m/s release ust right. I could turn the white noise into immediacy with movement of the closing gate.
 
But your issue is that it is fizzy. Would it not be understandable to limit the sound area that fizz is coming from with a LPF? Or have a gate to clamp down after the rakes a few db at least? Those gates are sensitive. Doesnt need to become like a slicer.

They sound pretty strong to me. Usable chunk.

I think for most styles of music you would find that a HPF and LPF is on every track.
 
I stay away from LPFs on close-miked tracks, because there is really not much above 5kHz, and so, getting rid of the fizz requires doing two things: (1) A very aggressive LPF around 4kHz or less, robbing the track of the needed presence, and (2) boosting the mids in the 700Hz area more than 10dB, which suggests that the track should have been fixed in the recording phase, rather than resorting to such extreme EQ fixes in the box. I usually do apply a HPF.

I am glad you find the tracks (even the close-miked track) useable. That is very encouraging to hear.
 
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Try to compare results from where others are at. We are all here to get better.

This is my A3, direct mixed back with a SM58 room, capturing the 1960AB. A method recently suggested to me by member TalismanRich.

The A3 chain has a bunch of stuff in it. Preset 21 on Guitar card 1. Kinda heavy metal. Kim Thayil of Soundgarden and the Edge used them.
 

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LazerBeakShiek said:
Try to compare results from where others are at. We are all here to get better.

This is my A3, direct mixed back with SM58 room capturing the 1960AB.

The A3 chain has a bunch of stuff in it. Preset 21 on Guitar card 1. Kinda heavy metal. Kim Thyall of Soundgarden and the Edge used them.
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That sounds very good. Nice, healthy midrange, and very tight in the bottom.
 
The read on the tuning instability with drop tuning had some nice info. That was cool, Yellow Dwarf. Didn't find a lot of meat to apply to this issue. Yeah, I use the VG-99 system that is a MIDI guitar pup. MIDI allows control of each string/pitch/tone/sense/vol. Drop tuning is easy press a button with Roland VG-99 COSM tracking. Probaly somewhat cheating the problem.

Seventh Son, that is 80% direct A3 at least. Not a lot of SM58 is heard getting the cabinet and room in there. Still not where I want it. I would also like less fizz, and more breakup into harmonics. The harmonics give it a depth. Have you tried using preamps with your DSL? I think it could thrash out with a Rocktron piranha like Mustaine used. A DSL has a strong power section. ADA MP-1 like paul Gilbert, or a Mesa Triaxiss are also superb ..those are still expensive the Triaxiss. I found preamps very able to color the sound in more or less than subtle ways. Kinda like a favorite distortion pedal.
 
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I figured out how to get better tones on recordings. I can get real nice tones if I crank the amp to 10. That's when my DSLs sound their best. There really is a lot of truth to the saying that Marshalls sound best on 10. I always had a hard time believing it, as I really like what I hear in the room, even on lower settings, but the microphone does not sugarcoat like our ears, and so you have to really crank it to get the compression and tube and speaker coloration.
 
Seventh Son, I listened to your guitar tracks. I think you need to set a sample delay on the close mic and delay it a little so that it's not interacting so much with the room mic to cause the weird phase/boxy sound I think you might be considering to be fizz. If you zoom into the waveforms just when the guitar starts playing, you will see the close mic waveform start and then however many milliseconds later the room mic will start to see the guitar sound. You can either spend a lot of time before recording moving the room mic around an inch here and there, or you can just delay the close mic so the wavs go up and down together in the DAW. Then all of a sudden both tracks start working together and the guitar sounds beefy but also tight and cuts. It does all the things!
 
When I am playing in front of a cabinet, turning up the gain does sound better. By the end of the session my amp would be dimed, and ears fatigued.
 
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