double micing guitars.

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kristian

kristian

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double micing guitars, ive been told that this can cause phase problems. first off i havent really noticed too much of a difference in double micing, where as playing the part two seperate times i do. in order to play the pary only once what if you use a pre out into anoter cab/combo in a seperate room to prevent mic bleeding and miced these two. that way there would be two different sounding guitars, and maybe then you could mic each at a different distance getting different, if slightly arrival times of sound..
 
Yo Kristian:

I'll have a Scotch neat.

Why not just run your guitars into an amp with a by-pass thru buss and then directly into the recorder? I have this little but powerful KG amp in my studio and when I use a bass player, he just runs into the thru buss [doesn't go to the external speaker] and then into the recorder. Works fine. You should be able to do this with two guitars if you have that buss on any amp.

Don't let Robin Hood get you with an arrow.

Green Hornet
 
I do notice a big difference micing my guitar with two mics, but then I use acoustic guitar, so maybe that's significant.

Micing cabs in separate rooms can get you two different sounds, yeah, but you lose out on the depth of a stereo field. But if you don't hear that depth when you stereo mic anyway, then you haven't lost anything, right? :)
 
I don't know if this means anything, but... I thought damn near anyone could tell the difference between single and doubled parts.
 
what i think im trying to say, is rather then playing each part twice, if you used two different combos or cabs would that make enough difference to sound like playing the part twice, or is nothing gonna help like actually playing the part twice, the morei thik and do the more i think you have to play the part twice to get it thicker.
 
Just a thought....

Are you sending each mike to a separate stereo channel? (If you mix the two mics to mono you wont get much effect).

I have found that 2 mics even a couple of feet apart give a nice stereo effect... as long as they are panned right and left on playback.

Sincerely;

Dom Franco
 
Hey,

If you bring the mic into one channel, yes 1 mic, and pan it hard left. Then you send it to a delay unit that is set to fully wet (no dry signal) and return that signal to another channel or aux return and pan it hard right, then you wil have that spacious doubling.

I know I know, there are the purests out there that will painstakingly work for hours to get that REAL acoustic thing happening, but let me tell you that they use this technique in the pro studios too. Not many studio musicians carry around a bunch of amps to experiment. The engineer knows what to do.

Try it, with about a 25 to 30 millsecond delay. I know you'll be impressed, providing you have a decent delay capable of sample at high frequencies.
 
Ears idea is the way that I would think of first...If i didnt want to do a "organic" double...also you could try "reamping"...takeing your first guitar track and sending it out to a different amp and then recording it from that source..I've had it done, but have never done this myself... seems relativly easy..I'd like to hear if someone knows about the ins and outs of this
 
I've been having a blast messing with the phase on a two mic setup for guitar. I tried a 57 or a senn 609 on the grill and a 414 a couple feet away (yeah, yeah, 3:1 or whatever). Reamping kicks ass as long as the guitar player can take the credit for your ingenuity.

If you're gonna dual mic an acoustic, point a dynamic at the neck joint and put a condenser pointing down by the guitar player's right ear. i bet you scratch the close mic.

Ree
 
I really think you can't beat the sound of actually playing the part twice, the inconsistencies are what'll make it sound interesting. Ears' advice about the delay is good though. One thing to try is a longer delay time, like have your dry track hard left with a dotted-eighth delay hard right. It's magic, I'm tellin' ya. I've been using this trick for years now and I'm still not sick of it...
 
Yes Scraggs that's right.
The best delay is one of timeing reference.
Usually with a delay or in books on recording, there is a table of delay times for tempo of the song. My value was a good start. The tempo/delay ratios are better.
When ever delay is in the picture. I you can't find the table to work with at any given time, the use prime numbers. A number that only divides into itself. 1,3,7,,,,,43,,,,,etc.
Then you won't have an out of sync delay.
 
I need a typing course.

Here is another idea I have done with acoustics. I read it in a rag.

by a set of 12 string guitar strings.
Take 2 acoustic guitars and string them with the standard set on one and the 12 string (high octave set) on the the other. Then record one at a time and pan hard left and right. It is a very unique sound. Try it if you can.
 
Hey Ears, that's cool stuff.

The 12 sting light's are tuned up an octave from the normal right? I've tried this before, it is a very different sound, even by itself. Think it's called Nashville tuning. I was only tuning E A D G up an octave and leaving B E the normal octave, kept breaking strings.
 
I'm not sure if it's called Nashville Tuning.
But it is a country , Nashville trick.

Yeah you don't tune the high E and B up.
Leave it as is. Also try the higher octave unit by itself.You can get some cool voicings with finger style.
 
It is indeed called Nashville tuning. Here's another trick that sounds like a great idea, but i could never get it to work: tune an acoustic guitar to an open chord and put it on a stand 5-10 feet from your amp. Put mics on the amp and right on the acoustic and send them to separate tracks. Play your electric part through the amp and the strings on the acoustic will vibrate sympathetically in key, making for a very cool sound in theory. My problem is there's always been so much amp sound bleeding into the acoustic mic i didn't really hear the sound of the strings vibrating. Anybody got any ideas? Oh, and as far as delay times: figure out what the tempo of your song is and divide 60 (seconds)by that, this'll give you the value for a quarter note. Por ejemplo, 120bpm divided into 60=500 milliseconds. So an eighth note would be 250, dotted eighth 375, etc. Sometimes you have to nudge the time forward or back a bit depending on how much yer swinging things...
 
True with the timing thing.

Have you tried compressing the amp signal?

Maybe even both channels. That may even the
amplitude.
 
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