boxy guitar sound

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detuned6

Metal dude
I am having a hard time getting a guitar sound that i like a 100%. As of last night im doin this-mesa single rectifier ->Marshall 4x12 celestions, sm57 1/4" off of grill, cad m37 condensor 1 ft away. I moved the mics all around to find the sweet spot but im getting this overall boxy sound , anoying low end that kind of muddys the signal up. im useing the low cut on the mic and preamp. i cut back on the dist allso. The room with the amp is about 9x10 with carpet on floor, back of door, 3 walls, and a mattress against one wall.theres allso a drum kit which is all covered up with blankets.
The control room is about 9x7 with half the walls covered with carpet. Im monitoring threw event ps-8's. Which room is giving me the "boxy sound"??
Should i angle the amp at a different wall??
Do i need to deaden the control room more??( i cant put anything on the ceiling)
 
I'm guessing, but don't the SM57 specs say that you'll get a proximity effect at 1/4"? (Or was it *less than* 1/4"?) Moving a bit farther back might help kill that unwanted low end without (as much) EQ.

But then again, I can't even get a guitar sound that I like 50% ;) , so what do I know...
I bet your demo will kick mine's ass soundwise.
 
one to two inches away sound awesome (to me). try cutting different freqs between 250 - 500
 
I find the general rule to be that if you want the close mic brighter, you must move it closer to the center of the cone. Moving it farther away (a little) may help also. I find that cutting distortion gives more definition, but will not help much with adding high freq.'s. What pre are you using?
 
I have heard some nasty things about Behringer gear. Never used it, so this is just heresay. Having a good pre is pretty important.

Matty
 
Room Acoustics

Have you tried some "crazy shit" yet? Like: Putting the amp in your clothing closet with all those long hanging coats that your wife always got and never wore? Then mic the whole thing up like you want it with just the one mic and then shut the door. That is a dead sound... but, deppending on what kind of stuff you are doing... the right kind of "after the fact" effects can make that dead sound come out in some cool ways. I promise you the muddles sound will not be a problem.

Anyway that is just a screwy idea. But honestly... remember that the control room acoustics play an equal (I dare say 75% more than the studio room) of a role in the way your over all product will sound. I say 75% more simply because most do it yourselfers don't think about it and think that a set of SONY DJ headphones will work just fine for mixing and mastering.
just remember that if you have a boomy recording room, and a boomy control booth... then the boominess compounds itself and you will never feel satisfied. Or if the recording room sounds fine but you control room is boomy as hell... then you will rack your skull for ages and never get it, and it wasn't the recording environment after all. So makes sure you give a good listen to the amp playing in the recording room. Does it sound good to your naked ear? Have someone else play the guitar. do not try to play a riff and be the judges as well. Walk around the room as the amp plays and AT LEAST stuff a couple a hundred pounds of blankets et cetera, BEHIND the amp so that there is no Bass bounce back from the speaker cones off the wall behind it.

Also... do you have a good EQ processor? if not.. get one. They are the fucking unsung heros of home recording. They are, to me, along with compressors/gates etc. the units that make the difference between pro sound and tin shack muddled junk.

Another little idea.
Try to record the two mics as you have been, and at the exact same time on another track, run a line out of the amp head direct into the consoule. Make sure of course that you aren't blowing anything up here. This way you will have the real life miced signals, and you can VERY LIGHTLY flavor it with a bit of "uncomfortably too real" direct signal from the amp head. just try it to see if you can get a more cutting sound.

I hope I helped some man,

Mike
 
Just out of curiousity- Have you tried the sound you dont like in a mix? I've been finding that the sounds I like while tracking are usually way too beefy when it comes time to mix. I end up cutting most of the bass and mids out of them. Try it in a rough mix and see how it sits with the bass and vocals, you might be surprised.
 
Bingo. Exactly.

I musta had my head up my ass one night when I tracked my acoustic with a coupla mics that I just stuck out there somewhere, and so there was loads of 'room sound' on the tracks which I didn't like. But it was a blues tune, and after the beats and vocal and bass were added, that sound on the guitars made the song sound better than it would've with a clean, close-miked sound. Go figure.

How the whole thing sounds is way more important than how the individual parts sound.
 
pisces7378

thats a good idea, i never spend enough time in the recording room with the amp, i should hang out in their and just jam have a drink and really "listen" what it sounds like for 30 min.
Normally i have the amp in the control room(the 4x12 in the recording room) and make ajustments to the amp by whats coming out of the monitors.
 
Which room is giving me the "boxy sound"?

I hope this don't sound too silly but you have tried monitoring through headphones to see if it was the conrol room haven't you? Do you have some recordings of other guitarists using roughly the same setup? Maybe you could run them through the control room monitors to see if they sound boxy also.

It's a safe bet that the M37 is picking up the room reflections. Do you really need it? The best guitar sound I ever got was with an SM58 (not a 57) about 3 feet away. Don't ask me why.

Another thing I've done is to tape a piece of thick paper around 3 sides of a condenser mic so it would only pick up what was directly in front of it. An old trick but it works to help eliminate room reflections pretty well. Try cupping your hands around the back of a mic once while talking into it and you'll see what I mean.
 
People often say "some of the biggest guitar sounds come out of the smallest guitar amps"

That said, I recently did some recording using a 4x10 mesa boogie cab and an sm57. I think probably a great 1x12 combo might be a better choice for recording, because you can then push the speaker without deafening volume. But we have to work with what we've got.

Anyway, the reason I'm saying all this is that after trying everything and banging my head on the wall, I found got the best results when I turned the master volume down. WAY down. I suspect the reason is that the low volume probably had the effect of mitigating the proximity effect.

I had the SM57 angled toward the edge of the cone and the volume pretty dang low, and the mic very close to the amp grille.

Once I set it up this way, it seemed like the best sound I could get with mic placement. After that, I simply eq'ed the amp to get it to sound like I wanted. I realized that bad mic placement and too much volume wasn't the only reason I wasn't getting a great sound - I realized I had my amp set up with too bassy a sound (as well as too present) and without enough mid.

I compared the results I was getting with AC/DC recordings (which is roughly the ballpark guitar sound I was looking for) and realized that the way I had my amp set up was not ideal.

So consider that aspect as well. Good luck!

Tim
 
Most of the rhythm tracks on Weezer's first album were recorded at an almost inaudible volume. Rivers Cuomo said this in an interview. Those guitars sound really quite heavy and chunky.
 
windowman

I wish i had good cans to try to listen to it threw. My radio gack cans are half blown on one side its kind of annoying to use them. Good cans are one my "many things i need" list. Only If i dident spend $130 on monster cable last week..............hmm.
 
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