guitar microphone

[daveblue222]

Hi. My amp is a fender hot rod deville 4x10. i want to buy a mic to record it with. I prefer classic vinatage tones and want something that doesnt turn the sound into some compressed, noiseless, catastrophe. The kind of sound i want or recorded sound rather would be similar to hendrix,billy childish,pink floyd, stevie ray vaughan, kyuss,buddy guy, canned heat. i play a strat and use a little big muff fuzz pedal along with a tube screamer. are the old telefunken mics i need?

i would also like to find out where to position the mic for best results, or how to vary the sound for different songs by having the mic angled,or positioned differently.


thanks

 

[scrubs]

There are lots and lots of choices for miking amps, and there really is no single choice that will please everyone.

The Royer R121, AEA R84, Beyerdynamic M160, & other ribbon mics are very popular for amps and might give you the tone you're looking for. Classic, smooth, not too harsh, etc.

Some other classic choices are: Shure SM57, Shure SM7B, Sennheiser MD421, Sennheiser MD441, AKG C414B, old Neumann and Telefunken tube mics.

 

[MadAudio]

As for positioning, that's up to you ears and the mic you use.

 

[ofajen]

Hi. My amp is a fender hot rod deville 4x10. i want to buy a mic to record it with. I prefer classic vinatage tones and want something that doesnt turn the sound into some compressed, noiseless, catastrophe. The kind of sound i want or recorded sound rather would be similar to hendrix,billy childish,pink floyd, stevie ray vaughan, kyuss,buddy guy, canned heat. i play a strat and use a little big muff fuzz pedal along with a tube screamer. are the old telefunken mics i need?

i would also like to find out where to position the mic for best results, or how to vary the sound for different songs by having the mic angled,or positioned differently.


thanks

If it were me, I'd attend most to my playing and the tone from my guitar and amp. I'd start by trying to get a sound I thought was really good and then recording it with an accurate mike (in my case, i'd start with a flat, true omni mike.)

Then I'd spend a lot of time experimenting by recording the sound and then trying different settings on the amp. sometimes a volume level or level of distortion that sounds good when I'm standing and listening doesn't sound so good when miked up close. Or a sound that sounds good alone doesn't work so well in the mix (often, a good sound by itself is too distorted to work in the mix.)

Also experiment with mikes farther away that capture room tone and combining close and far mikes. If you can control the sound at the mike and the amount of direct and reverberent tone, I'd experiment with that, too.

I'd also try different tubes. I record a lot with EL84s in my Traynor amps (designed for EL34s), but they work well with a single 10" speaker and I have several of those to try out.

And... don't forget that the memorable tones of the folks you list were produced by really talented creative folks recorded by talented engineers in good rooms.

Good luck!

Otto

 

[zacanger]

If I may, I'd say do what Otto said and get the sound you want first. Then use an SM57, place it on one of the speakers, angled down so it's not at the center, about degrees from the middle of the cone. I get a pretty classic stoner-rock/blues sound with that. I've never had a Hot Rod amp, but I've played them and recorded with another amp that was close to the same, using a Boss BD-2 for my OD. Pretty SRV meets Clutch sounding.

 

[OhSh1rt]

I'm no expert, but, I, personaly, this is me, love the sound of two karma micro mic's (one on the front/one on the back of the cab, must be positioned right for phase reasons), and hell $20 for two, it's not a big loss if they don't turn out as well as you expected. I've heard my amp/friends fender delux with an SM57 and I don't like it as much.


But that is me.


-jeffrey

 

[10571z]

sm57 for the win

 

[XLR]

Lately I've been liking an sm57 at the grill of my SWR Cali Blonde mixed with a bit of an MSH1-O a foot back. The 57 gets the ballsy close-up tone and the 1-O gets the open natural sound, then time align and mix to taste. Clean and rich. YMMV.

Tim

 

[cusebassman]

As always, here's my two cents... you may have read in a pile of posts that I play a variety of guitars through a Fender Blues DeVille, which is pretty much the same as the Hot Rod aside from some cosmetics and minor differences in the head. The tone is different, but similar. I use a Sennheiser e609 hanging right in front of one of the speakers, off-center from the middle of the cone but still facing dead-on, and then I have a small-diaghram condensor on another speaker, angled toward the flat part of the cone (e.g. if you set the microphone up so it is pointing dead-center of the cone, straight on, and then angle it in some direction about 30-45 degrees). Then I mix them equally. The e609 sounds great by itself, but the MXL 604 (the SD condensor) adds a bit of bottom end to it. You might also try a dynamic such as the SM57 in place of the SD condensor, I've heard they also sound good. Sure there are plenty of ways to go about mic'ing this particular amp (and others, of course), but this seems to produce the most true-to-life tone on tape for me.