How do YOU set up your room for guitar amp recording?

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mixsit said:
I tried it for a while forty some years ago on a Twin. But really all I remember was that there was nothing particularly special about it, just more distortion and at a lower volume. But looking back I'd guess most of what ended up is it was still just a stock Twin- still with a cool front end that for distortion, could have used more gain up front for example.

I also tried a hundred watt resistor on the aux speaker jack. (Whoop'de do. A whole 3dB off LOL
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Thanks,
Apparently you can use them on a straight tube amp. The end of this video (after 5:00min.) is a good example of how it sounds using a Marshall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2NB5bbg6bY
 
miroslav said:
No....you're not being a dick...:)....in that picture I actually WAS going for a M/S setup....but then I ended up rotating them in the Blumlein position, and that's what I used for recording the lead for that session.
I need to take another picture with them in the actual Blumlein rotated postion relative to the cab....I've just been lazy to take a new picture. Someone else called me out on that pic once before. :D

Either way....the only point I was really making was that even with two figure-8 mics at almost 2' away....I wasn't really getting a lot of reverb or room sound.
Granted, my room has no obvious reverberation, as it's been treated to remove most flutter and first order reflections....though it's not "dead" by any stretch.
It has what I would describe as a quick decay, woodsy/warm sound. I really didn't have that big a room to go for any credible "live" sound that would be good enough for recording, so I opted for a more controlled sound, and I add what ambiance I need later....which is why I tend to get away with mics open to the whole room....it just adds a touch of space, but no real obvious room sound....if that makes any sense.
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Yes it absolutely makes sense. It's hard to gauge exactly how my room will sound once it's done, but my PLAN (hopes) is to have it fairly reflection free at the control side, and with a "controlled" yet not totally dead sound everywhere else (due to ample absorption and sprinkled in diffusion) and then just slightly livelier back at the "drum" end but no 10 second reverb decay time or anything! haha

Was just pickin yall's brains about how you do it. I guess it depends on your rooms too. I mean if respondent #1 has a super live/echoey room, he'll likely answer "I put baffles around my amp" and respondent #2 with a super dead room might be like "i don't" and then guy #3 is like "what's a guitar amp? I use plugins!" hahaha
 
Interesting thread.

I've always wondered about the benefits of decoupling a cab from the room - I play a 100-watt Mesa Roadster thorugh a Recto 4x12 cab, and it's semi-decoupled anyway on its rubber feet but I've been curious about products like that Auyralex pad. Not enough to actually buy one, lol, but curious. I'm obviously not going to get a 4x12 (which SAYS it only weights 105 pounds, but to me that sounds way too low) up on a chair, but I could try to build something down the road.

Miroslav - your idea of building a "tent" over the cab is actually something that I should have tried by now and I absolutely will. I'd imagine you;d need some pretty heavy comforters to get any moderately broadband reduction around it, but when I record, I tend to be 1) in the same room as my amp, standing fairly close to it, 2.) not cranked up THAT loud, since I'm in a condo and the neighbors downstairs have a young kid, and 3.) more often than not monitoring through my speakers rather than wearing headphones, for comfort. This isn't really ideal, since usually I'll hear a faint amount of bleed from playback through the amp (the hihad and snare will usually be faintly audible on playback) and sometimes I can hear my pick attack on the strings, acoustically, even though the rest of the sound is pretty muted. This seems like something that would be better at dealing with high end than midrange and low end, so this would probably take care of those issues pretty neatly.

Plus, with a head, you can leave the amp itself exposed and just cover up the cab, making it easier to continue to tweak settings, etc.
 
Guitargodgt said:
I just roll the sucker out at least 6' from the wall and throw a 57 on it. I've never felt the need for any other prep than that.
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Why 6'? If what everyone is saying about close micing is true (that nothing around the amp/room matters when you have a mic up close - which i still believe there has to be SOME influence on the sound based on amp placement in the room and room acoustics themselves), then it shouldn't matter.

I think it still matters to some degree (I wouldn't throw my amp in the cold seller and track it in there with a close 57!), however I don't believe I've ever said to myself "it must be at least 6' from the wall". I guess I just subconsciously make sure ANY instrument I record is not right up against a wall. Then again you see tons of high end tracking room pics where the cabs are all lined up right against the wall with mics on them ready to go.
 
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Wow dude, if you're picking up your pick hitting the strings through the cab mic.... just wow. I'd suggest finding another way. Any other way. Turn it up, build a tent, move the cab far away from you. Something.
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
Miroslav - your idea of building a "tent" over the cab is actually something that I should have tried by now and I absolutely will. I'd imagine you;d need some pretty heavy comforters to get any moderately broadband reduction around it....
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As in the pictures....I use two thick comforters, the second, top one is pretty heavy.
Of course...they don't provide soundproofing, though there is a good drop in volume in the room, which allows for more amp volume than without....and the main effect is that it makes for a very dry signal going into the mic....which I sometimes want for rhythm guitars.
I've also used the tent around my Hammond extension speaker cab, for that same reason, but also to prevent any outside noises from entering the mic.

I first saw this "trick" while working for awhile at this studio back in the mid '90s. It was used on the kick drum.
The engineer took a second kick drum shell (no heads) that was then placed in front of the actual kick, almost touching, then the mic went out in front of that shell, right at lip....and then, about 3 huge blankets were paced over that entire rig...covering most of the actual kick drum, the second shell and the mic...turning it into this huge blob. :D
The kick was really dead, but with huge THUMP. That second shell funneled the sound right at the mic...like a tunnel.

I never personally tried that when recording a drum kit....but I figured the same tent principle could be used for guitar amps/cabs...and it works quite well...though it's extra work to set up. If the amp is a combo, with the controls inside the tent, it takes more time to dial the amp in, and you have to keep reaching in under the blankets to adjust, and then cover up to check, then maybe in again to move the mic, and again chec...all the time trying not to disturb the whole tent setup too much.
As I mentioned....I don't do it as much as I use to initially, because after a lot of recording I saw that my studio was not very "live" or that it was adding too much room sound to tracks....so the amount of ambiance in most cases is just right, a touch of woodsy room sound, but occasionally I still want a really dry/dead track so that I can FX it later, so then I break out the comforters and I build a tent....light a campfire, grill some burgers....;)
 
These days I prefer sitting them right down on a concrete floor in a fairly big room. Usually two cabs separated by about 6' . . . they don't have to be 4x12s . . . a couple of 1x12s or 2x12s will do. Maybe a dual rig at times. E906s backed off about 10" on each cab . . . maybe 57s up close, but not that often. Sometimes a couple of ribbons backed off and higher up . . .
 
this is how I record all of my electric guitars: a 1970s beyer m160n off axis and a Fender Champion 600 re-issue, the amp is extremely heavily modified...to the point where it's almost a different circuit, new valves, transformers, caps, resistors standby switch, pentode/triode switch, DC filter mod, and the speaker grill cloth replaced with oxblood fabric and a jensen speaker, jj/tesla valves...I went mental when modding this one :D

I sometimes use a vintage shure 545 SD or modern sm57 depending on the track but for all my tracks I use the same amp on a wooden stool close miced, nothing special here but it sounds great and sits in the mix better than any other amp I own. I've also got an orange PPC112 with a greenback speaker for darker tones and vox VR30 which is a bit of a poor mans AC30 also heavily modified and hugely improved.

View attachment 87154View attachment 87155

p.s mine goes to 12!
 
Noticed quite a bit of discussion regarding power soaks & attenuators, so I thought I'd chip in. I recently used this new product from Rivera on a session and was totally blown away by how amazing it sounded. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm a big fan of Rivera amps and have used a 5500 combo in tandem with an AC30 reissue with greenbacks in it and I couldn't be happier. I use the Rivera as my main amp and the Vox as a boost amp, just FYI.)

So if yer working in a home studio situation where loud amps are not kosher most of the time, get one of these: Rivera RockCrusher Recording Power Attenuator with 11-Band EQ Speaker Emulator | Sweetwater.com

They make another model that's about $300 less but it doesn't have the 11-band EQ speaker emulator, which in my experience, makes all the difference when attenuating an amp in-studio. It's really amazing and worth every cent. It not only allows you to get an extremely accurate tone at zero volume but also allows you to totally change the sound of your amp. No joke. Watch the video on the page I linked above, and make sure yer NOT listening on laptop speakers. Either throw on a set of cans or run the video's sound through your studio monitors so you can really hear what's going on. I'm tellin' ya, you won't find a better attenuator anywhere.
 
Greg_L said:
Wow dude, if you're picking up your pick hitting the strings through the cab mic.... just wow. I'd suggest finding another way. Any other way. Turn it up, build a tent, move the cab far away from you. Something.
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It's incredibly subtle, and you lose it in a full mix, but it's definitely in there. I also play shred/prog metal but pick like a blues guy using heavy picks, which doesn't help any. :laughings:

My room is also currently untreated (I moved over the winter, 5 days before having ACL surgery, so this is a summer project), which should help too.
 
Strangely enough I've gotten some of my best guitar recordings at home by setting my amp up in the bathroom adjacent to my bedroom and pushing the mics about a foot in front of the amp and cranking the amplifier and kind of saturating the room. I think the reflections from the tile in the bathroom create a somewhat pleasing reverb when combined with the spring reverb on my tube amp. I can't explain it, because I wouldve never thought a narrow room, maybe 3 1/2 ft by 15 x 12(rough guess on dimensions), would sound good, but it sounds better than the bedroom go figure.
 
Good question! Any online store where I can buy some isolation equipment for cheap?
 
Cheap<--->isolation.... is a tough combination.

How much isolation are you looking for....?
Just to knock off a bit of sound/noise....or 100% isolation...or something in-between.
 
I usually record via a re-amping process.

I set things up, turn the amp up very, very loud, hit record and leave the studio until the track is over.

I reamp with lots of different mic positions and a Neumann U-89 as a room mic. I blend the resultant sounds instead of EQing.
 
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