amp mic compression

B

bunnyfunk

New member
I am looking for some thoughts on rather I should stick a compressor between my sm57 and recorder when I am micing my guitar cab.
would this do anything for my guitar later on in the mix? such as give it more distinction in the mix, or give a more punchy tone? or, would I just be losing dynamics by doing this? I am not worried about peaks, I can get the levels recorded good. I also am unable to add compression later(I am using a sony minidisk recorder, it has no inserts, and I have been told that running compression through the aux sends defeats the purpose of compression-is that true?)soooo many questions and sooo little time! any thoughts are apreciated.
 
It's common to compress a elctric guitar

* Guitars have a wide dynamic range

* many guitars have uneven volume due to bad ajustment of pickups and height of strings.

* a compressor will give you a smooth in the face sound.

* will help level out - a chord versus a single solo note

* will save a guitarist with sloppy technique

You can compress on the way to the mixer if you need to.

If you have several effects' place the compressor first.
 
I have never had to compress a guitar to tape, except an acoustic occasionally. Electric guitar though? No way. Maybe, and I say only maybe a clean electric. But even then, if the meters are jumping all over the place, the mic placement is bad, or the tone out of the amp is crappy. The later is probably more times than not the culprit.

In a mix, I have never had to compress a distorted guitar. A clean electric sometimes, but usually only for funk type stuff. An acoustic is almost a certainty, but only if the parts are really dynamic.

An aux send is just a side feed from the channel strip. If you have something turned up on a channel strip, then feed that channels aux send to another unit, you still have the original signal present. This works well for adding effects like reverb or delay, but for compression, it doesn't work. The idea of a compressor is to limit the dynamics of the signal. If you feed a compressor via an aux send, and the channel volume is still feeding to the stereo master, then all that you did was increase the overall volume of the signal by combining the channel volume with the return path of the compressor. If you can select whether to send the channel to the master or not, you would need to not send it to the master section for you to just hear the compressed signal in this kind of setup. But this is a unnecessary waist of an aux send. Do you get what I mean. Combining the original signal with the compressed signal accomplish's nothing at all. A compressor is not a effect. It is a dynamic processor. It is supposed to control the original signal, not add another signal to it. But that is what you would be doing if you used an aux send to feed a compressor.

Ed
 
I've done this trick once before with bass tracks. I'm sure that you have a cue out on your minidisk- from the cue- feed the signal through the compressor and into one of the channels. On my four track I have a cue level for each track so I can send just one track (maybe just a little bit of bleed) to the compressor and then feed it into the channel that the track is on. The cue will play it even if the channel isn't switched to tape (It dosent do that when you hit record though- I found that out the hard way)
Your minidisk should do that.
 
I only use compression on electric distorted guitar when I know that there is some kind of scratching or some kind of light palm muting that will go on in the song. When a tube preamp is used to kind of shave off the peaks and replace with a little even harmonic distortion, it levels like a compressor does. as does tube or even transistor distortion. If the song has like a pick scratching in down the strings kind of thing going on at some places, I have the compression set at like a 2.5:1 ratio, attack on the slow side release medium and the threshold set so you get like 2-3 db of compression. THis way it kindof does nothing while the guitar is just playing rhythm and when there is any scratching, it is allowed to come up. Kind of like a loudness maximizer thing yeah i think this much just for a guitar sound oh god it gets worse with compression tricks and multiple micing things i found.....
 
I disagree with Ed on compressing the guitar.

A compression in many pro guitarist's is part of their set up. In such cases it's better to leave it up to them and you don't need to compress but compression is being used.

I would be willing to send a mp3 comparison of a electric
Guitar with and without. Not a light compression but a 4:1
10dB gain to show the advantage.

Ed does every guitarist you come across have such a good playing technique that they dont lose any audible notes.
if so, you are one lucky guy to work with such really good players.

At the end of it all you either like the sound or you don't.
I do.


[This message has been edited by Shailat (edited 02-17-2000).]
 
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