Help on micing amp

J

jneau

New member
Alright...

Here's my setup:
- Guitar straight into my Peavey Roadmaster 160w with a 4x12 cabinet
- Sennheiser e609 Silver running into ART Voice Channel
- ART Voice Channel into Tascam Neo

I'm using the Voice Channel strictly for compression and a bit of tone.

I'm loving the sound that's coming out of my amp, but when I listen to the playback it sounds a bit like the sound is coming through a tube (hard to describe what I mean, but I hope that makes sense). It's not terrible, but I feel there's quite a bit of room for improvement.

My problem is I'm not sure where to start on adjusting this to improve the sound.

Anyone have good tips on getting the best sound out of a setup like this?
 
Just throwin thoughts out here but...

check to make sure you're not tracking too hot. An input signal of -15 to -18 is fine.

Mic placement..... move your mic around on the speaker itself. More in towards the center cone will be more treble...tinny (ish)
Further out towards the edge of the speaker will get boomier.
Somewhere in there is the sweet spot.
Also try angling your mic. Off axis is usually where I find it. Sometimes straight on to the speaker, sometimes not. Play around.

Try the different speakers themselves. One of my 2X12's sounds better than the other even tho they're the same brand...
?

Also try double tracking...as in...play and record the same part twice. Copy/paste doesn't sound nearly as good.
Pan those two separate takes as you see fit. Maybe wide pan, maybe not. See what YOU think.

just some thoughts....
 
I guess I'm assuming you're tracking distorted guitar....
and distortion is a compressor. so maybe take the compressor out of the equation and see if that helps.
 
Very good DB! :drunk:

Jneau you might want to save the compression till later on during the mix down and then again maybe not just depends on how you work it.
 
Ack, and I just noticed I put this in the mixing section rather than the recording section. Sorry!

Thanks for the replies.

I am using the overdrive channel on the amp for this...but I noticed a similar effect (sounding like through a tube) using the clean channel on another song.

The 609 is a good mic for this, right? I've read mostly positive reviews, but more recently seen a few people saying it has a thin sound.

Also...with direct close miking, how much impact will the room itself have on the sound? Any?
 
The 609 is a good mic. You should be able to get some good recordings outta it.

The room won't have that much of an impact with close micing.

I'd just play around with placement til ya find it.

Are you running just the one mic? Mic + DI?
?

That "tube" thing almost sounds like some phase goin on.
?
 
also...I tend to have my mic either right up on the grill almost touching or an inch or two off.....
 
not a bad game plan.
Got a clip of what you're hearing you can provide a link to?
Not sure if you have enough posts yet to post it here...
?
 
Okay, played a bit over lunch.

- Still have the mic running through the ART, but I turned off the compression and am bypassing the EQ altogether. (So why the ART???? --> More fine-grained gain and output control of the signal)
- I turned up the volume on the amp from 2ish to 3ish. Besides simply being louder (louder than I'd normally play at home), this seems to have added more body to the sound.
- I played with mic positioning and ended up moving it all the way out to the outer edge of the speaker...in fact I'd say it's on the edge of the speaker.

Then I re-recorded a track I did the other day and compared them side by side. Much much fuller sound at the same output level.

Cool. Thanks.
 
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