Recording my guitar amp!

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inwiththeold

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I'm open to anything and everything about getting to sound as clear and professional as possible. Right now i'm trying to lay down some tracks with distortion, and I can't quite get it to sound the way i feel like it should sound. Im playing through a Fender hot rod deluxe, and I just bought a Sennheiser e609 large diaphragm dynamic mic, and i'm running that through an m-audio mobile-pre USB inter. any tips??
 
Dial back the distortion at the amp by about 30% - 40%....
 
Record a clean track as well - tracked separately - and as Miro says, cut the distortion back a bit. Mix a little of the clean sound in - will give it more punch if you're a tight player. Don't forget, distortion reduces dynamic range and can make sounds seem a bit flat...
 
In general, different mic positions, mic angles and position in the room all make a difference.
Be patient, spend the time, try different things.

You'll soon get a feel for whats going on if you stick with it.

I spent *month* doing it, but now when I mic up my Blues Jr, I know where the mic goes exactly and I can put it in the same position every time.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
FM
 
I second the less distortion is more suggestion. TV makes you look fatter than you really are and recording makes your guitar sound more distorted than it really was. Don't know why, but it's true. Mic placement is critical too and I agree you just have to try different things 'til you find you sweet spot. Also make sure you're getting the best tone you can from the amp before you try to record it. I have a Hot Rod Deluxe too. It's a great amp. Sounds its best crazy, crazy loud, though.

J
 
Play around with mic placements. Different angles, heights, distance back in the room. Maybe even mic the amp and the room. There's an endless possibility of things to try. Have fun with it.

And as people before said, cut back the distortion. When I normally play, Have my gain turned up to 8 or 9...When I record I dial it back to around 4 or 5.
 
pure.fusion said:
In general, different mic positions, mic angles and position in the room all make a difference.
Be patient, spend the time, try different things.

You'll soon get a feel for whats going on if you stick with it.

I spent *month* doing it, but now when I mic up my Blues Jr, I know where the mic goes exactly and I can put it in the same position every time.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
FM
Click to expand...

Wow, just read my own reply. What was I on?? Talk about off topic reply.

Apologies.

Yeah, agree strongly with the replys here - don't need to repeat it. But there's no free lunch; some people find that the less distortion you use, the more it will show up sloppy fret work!

Also, the mic placement is still relevent - different placement will mean different amounts of treble, which can have an effect on the perceived amount of distortion.

Would love to hear a sample of the Hot Rod Delux....

FM
 
No way man, I thought your reply was dead nuts! Mic position is critical. It's kinda one of those things where everything "matters" to one degree or another and you have to play with it 'til you find what you like. The biggest problem I find is that you can't listen to the sound while you're moving the mic around or adjusting the gain or whatever, because you hear the amp too much. So it's record, listen, tweak, record, compare, tweak, record, listen, tweak... "I think I liked the one 3 tries ago best. Now where was the mic on that one? I can't remember... Gah!" and on and on 'til you eventually find a few setups/settings that you really like for a particular tone on a particular guitar.

Not really a "sample", but FWIW, all of the guitars on this were played on a Hot Rod. Not really the distorted sounds the OP was talking about, though.
There's a lead and rhythm track each for a Strat and Gretsch Silver Falcon...

http://www.themusichutch.com/listen.php?songid=100786


J
 
I can't help but chuckle at the dial back the gain recommendations without even hearing anything first. It's like the holy grail of comments. :)
 
i disagree with tuning town the distortion by 30-40%. bad ju ju
 
anyone else find it annoying you cant add url links until youve posted 5 times? gosh its draining me!
 
hopefully this will be the one. do you ever record real drums?
 
Thanks Sonixx.

Fair comment to say that one shouldn't presume too much gain is the OPs difficulty without hearing his track, but it really is such a common occurence that it completely makes sense to throw it out there. I know my reaction many times on first playback has been "Huh? Was it really that fuzzy and undefined?!!?" Too much gain. I think it's a little like getting in your car in the morning if you haven't been in it since the day before when you drove home from work. You turn the car on and the radio comes blasting out. "Holy crap! Was I really listening to it that loud???"

All of that said, I don't know anything about recording way-distorted, metal type tones where the distortion kinda IS the tone. The "turn back the gain" advice may or may not hold water if that's what you're going for. For straight up rock distorted guitar tone, though, (think AC/DC or early Aerosmith), if I keep the gain a good bit lower than "normal" and crank the master WAAAAAAY up (need a decent tube amp), I always end up in the right neighborhood. (Then the tweaking starts - to find the right house:))

J
 
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Stuff a lot of cotton in your ears before you start adjusting your amp. Say, enough cotton to mute the sound of a very large explosion.

I mean, you might as well do so if your amp is sitting on the floor and you're standing up while you're "dialing it in".

You're probably thinking, "I wouldn't be able to hear what my amp sounds like".

And you'd be right. Even if you took the cotton out of your ears you still wouldn't be able to hear what your amp sounds like...to a microphone!

Get down on the floor, put your ears where your mic would be, and then dial your amp in. Then leave it set that way even if it sounds like total sh*t when you're standing up! Remember, you won't be recording what your ears hear; you'll be recording what the mic hears.

Doing some short test recordings is also helpful. Record, play back, dial your amp in. Lather, rinse, repeat. Again, don't worry about how your amp sounds in the room; worry about how it sounds when it's recorded.

While I play guitar, I'm primarily a drummer, and I long ago got used to my drums sounding really crappy in the room while sounding great when recorded...
 
For what's it worth, the OP is not actually recording his amplifier- he's not even recording his guitar through his amp- he's recording his playing ofhis guitar, through his amplifier.

Geech, doesn't anyone here have any respect for precision of language?:D

But seriously, I commend you on mic'ing your amp, instead of trying to go direct. The point of getting down low to hear what your amp sounds like near the floor in interesting. You could, of course, move the amp UP to a chair, and tilt it back. Of the guys I play music with most weeks, I am the only one who does that- one guy tilts his back, which is about the same thing, but the others just have their amps beaming the music at their ankles!:confused:
 
jjjtttggg said:
...but it really is such a common occurence that it completely makes sense to throw it out there.
Click to expand...
fair enough, but the OP only says it doesn't sound right. maybe not enough gain. IDK, we haven't heard it.
 
WOW! I went out of town for the last couple days and came back to all of this AWESOME advice! I'm brand new to this site and was totally unaware of how useful it could be! tomorrow I'm going to try all these things out! i didn't have it very loud before hand, I did just have the gain cranked way up and the presence and treble pretty high just trying desperately for a little punch, and I was getting close to what I wanted and then compared it to other recordings from songs like the one im trying to compose, and just didn't sound anything like it should.. so I'm going to try to boost the volume a little, without loosing my concentration on the center of the dome (for the trebbly punch) and i'll try using some sound proofing experiments so it doesn't echo too much.. If people are still paying attention to this thread, i'll throw in some samples of whats coming out. thanks again for everything!!
 
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