microphone for bass amplifier

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rhamett
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Okay, at the LEVELS that most guys end up playing their amp at, 18" away you will get so much direct signal that the "room" is going to be VERY LOW in volume, and I can almost totally assure you that you would not be able to tell what kind of room it was done in.

Remember, the sound will excite the room in unique ways. The way a snare drum reverberates in a room is TOTALLY different than the way a bass guitar will reverberate in a room. In the "delicated" 2-5KHz region (about the SMACK of a snare drum), or course you will hear the "room". But, low frequency reverberation is VERY hard to hear!

Phase problems will not be much of an issue either because of the 3:1 rule.

18" is pretty close. It isn't far enough away for me to consider it a "room mic" by a long shot. 4'? Sure.

The statement I referred too is FAR too over simplified, and simply, just not true! I have recorded plenty of stuff with a mic in untreated rooms where the mic was close enough to render the room a non factor.

If you are REALLY FUCING BLASTING something in a room, and you are using a mic fairly close, THEN the reverberated sound will start to become an issue. But, if that is the problem, well, TURN DOWN a bit! ;)
 
have you had a nasty bump on the head, ED? You don't half talk a lot of dross at times for someone who's supposed to know a bit and have the experience.

This is home recording, not live venue recording :rolleyes:
 
Ford Van said:
With the mic up to maybe 18" away from the speaker, the room will not come into play.
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I guess I have to confess I am surprised to hear this coming from you, Ford. My recent experiments with (home made) room treatments led me to believe that the room was affecting my sound no matter how "near field" I was to my alleged "monitors". Those acoustical interference patterns happen where they happen, even if it's 6 inches or 18 inches in front of the amp right where the mic diaphragm happens to be sitting....

But on the other hand, I cannot argue with the sound of that "Heavy Brother" track you posted. But then I ahve to figure your room is much more correctly treated for recording than my room or Rhametts room is.....
 
soundchaser59 said:
I guess I have to confess I am surprised to hear this coming from you, Ford. My recent experiments with (home made) room treatments led me to believe that the room was affecting my sound no matter how "near field" I was to my alleged "monitors". Those acoustical interference patterns happen where they happen, even if it's 6 inches or 18 inches in front of the amp right where the mic diaphragm happens to be sitting....
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Certainly it will be a mater of degree though, signal to noise, direct Vs reflected.
Wayne
 
soundchaser59 said:
I guess I have to confess I am surprised to hear this coming from you, Ford. My recent experiments with (home made) room treatments led me to believe that the room was affecting my sound no matter how "near field" I was to my alleged "monitors". Those acoustical interference patterns happen where they happen, even if it's 6 inches or 18 inches in front of the amp right where the mic diaphragm happens to be sitting....

But on the other hand, I cannot argue with the sound of that "Heavy Brother" track you posted. But then I ahve to figure your room is much more correctly treated for recording than my room or Rhametts room is.....
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The Heavy Brothers stuff was mostly tracked in a basement with carpet, and some foam between the joists in the ceiling. Walls were bare.

Next, your ears and a microphone pick up sound VERY differently. Next, you were monitoring broadband audio. I am talking about bass guitar, FAR from broadband audio.

If you guys don't believe me, then try some experimenting. Do it with BASS GUITAR AMP. Setup it up, carefully measure the distance from the mic. Record in one room. Setup in another room and record again.

I can tell you that with amplified instruments, in a mix, you are not going to hear a difference with the mic that close.

IF you haven't to get a wall that is closer than say 3'-4' from the mic, then, you can have a early reflection problem.

18" in my opinion is still a "close up" mic and mostly free from the room contributing anything significant to the sound, ESPECIALLY on a low end instrument.

Indeed, there is a difference in how the mic would sound in ANY room between on the grill and 18" away. But, the original statement that I referred to claims that micing a bass will sound muddy in an untreated room, and frankly, that is FAR from the truth unless you are doing distance micing!
 
I think DI bass is boring. The amp will add a lot of charachter. As for mic selection I generally use a SP B1, about a foot away. I think you can hear the room a little, but its definatley a five percenter. I do find that a dynamic bass drum mic will sound better on the bass cab when solo'ed than an LDC, but the LDC will sit in the mix nicely. Basically, don't use the mic you use on the bass drum. If you like the dynamic on bass then use a LDC in the kick, this will help seperate the kick and bass, which IMHO is one of the most chellenging aspects of creating a good mix.
 
Well, I can appreciate the different tones and room effect you can get with a mic, but if you've found DI bass boring, then whoever was doing it didn't know what they were doing. The problem with bringing the room into the picture is that while the room can have very good effect on something like a guitar amp sound, low frequencies in rooms have historically been one of the most difficult things to tame, and has been the cause of death of more than a few mixes. By eliminating the problems that the room can incur, you are then freeing yourself to be a little more creative with the bass sound in EQ or processing or whatever.

In guitar amps, it is rare that a preamp alone can get you just the sound you're looking for. Take some of the Marshalls for instance...a HUGE part of their tone comes from cranking the hell out of the poweramp and letting it roar. Bass tone, on the other hand, is not so much affected by the poweramp, but much more by the preamp. Note, I didn't say that it ALL comes from the preamp. I just said that the poweramp generally doesn't have anywhere near the effect that it does in most guitar amps.

You're right, the amp does add a lot of character. But it does it in the preamp stage. That's why I prefer to use something like the SansAmp DI's, or use the XLR line out of my Fender Bassman 250, but with the poweramp master turned down. The punchiness and livelyness of bass tone mostly comes from the preamp.
 
We use quite a lot of overdriven bass, and you need the charachter that only a little bit of air can provide when overdriving bass. I'm probably not in the majority with the style that we play, we kind of treat the bass like Bass and Rythym Guitar in one. I can see how in a more conventional band, especially when there are several guitars being layered that the 'uncomplicated' DI sound can be advantageuos.
 
I read an interview with G. Emerick ,Beatles engineer, that he used to put MCcartneys bass cab in middle of studio 2 ,DI it and mic it with a Neumann U47. I believe it was 6-12 feet away.
 
I am talking about bass guitar, FAR from broadband audio. If you guys don't believe me, then try some experimenting. Do it with BASS GUITAR AMP. Setup it up, carefully measure the distance from the mic. Record in one room. Setup in another room and record again.
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Well I'm going to explain briefly what's tricky about this in a minute....

I read an interview with G. Emerick ,Beatles engineer, that he used to put MCcartneys bass cab in middle of studio 2 ,DI it and mic it with a Neumann U47. I believe it was 6-12 feet away.
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Bingo. And now my explination:

FV, you're thinking in a live audio sense. In live, the consensus is to record everything up close and to compress the shit out of everything to let the speakers take care of the rest, in conjunction with the band's natural sound. But you have to remember that live and studio are their own seperate things in some cases.

Some of the basic rules that I'm sure we where both taught in audio is that sound travels at or about 1130ft per second. This is crucial in live sound, but the physics still apply to the studio, but with a twist.


You've explained that a snare drum will not reverberate like a bass cab will, and you are exactly right. But I don't know if you understand exactly why and how this is dangerous if misunderstood in the studio world.

What you are forgetting to note is that bass frequencies take longer to form than mid and hi frequencies. Hence, if you want to get body out of a bass cab, you don't close mic it in a studio. Well you can, but you're sort of cutting the development of low freqencies in half.

You do exactly what jmorris was kind enough to share. This is essentially the technology behind sonic maximizers, which delay higher frequencies to even them out somewhat with the lower frequencies. However, I used the BBE once and I never turned it on again.


This is the same reason you create a bass drum "tube" to extend the length of the drum to further allow the low frequencies to develope. In the end, you obtain a bigger and more developed sound. Bass amps still have to recreate harmonics that can extend all the way up to high mids.

You gave us homework, but now it's my turn to give you homework:

Simple test, I want you to take a kick drum and hook it up in a basic fashion.

1 mic inside the kick drum and 1 good kick mic outside the kick drum (I leave the mic selection up to you).


Then I want you to record 3 different takes:

Take 1: The outside mic is however close you want it to be to the resonant head.

Then try to see if you can construct a simple kick drum tube (wrap around a thin matress, exersise pad...anything that's big enough and flexible enough). It's not a big deal, but it'll help emphazize my point.

Take 2: The outside mic is 3 feet away from the head.

Take 3: The outside mic is 6 feet away from the head.


This a good way to demostrate the problems created by standing waves, nodes and antinodes and reflections. So although the human ear can't really discriminate location from low mids to lows, dosn't mean there aren't physics there we can ignore.

So your answer is not wrong, but I want to simply express that there are other ways of going about getting a natural bass sound in the studio. Live isn't my area of expertise, so I leave that up to professionals such as yourself.

Simply stating my point as gentle as always. :D
 
LeeRosario said:
Well I'm going to explain briefly what's tricky about this in a minute....




Bingo. And now my explination:

FV, you're thinking in a live audio sense. In live, the consensus is to record everything up close and to compress the shit out of everything to let the speakers take care of the rest, in conjunction with the band's natural sound. But you have to remember that live and studio are their own seperate things in some cases.
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Youngen, I was mixing sound live before you were born!

I was being paid to record demo's for bands when you were JUST getting into kindergarden.

Please don't try to pretend like I am confusing what I know, and somehow "confusing" doing live and studio sound. I am SURE that have MANY MANY MANY more hours or production time under my belt than you do!

I am VERY aware of what I am talking about, and don't need you second guessing what I mean, or insinuating that I am somehow "confusing" things. That is some of the most fucking condescending shit I have ever read by somebody! If you want to disagree with me, disagree. You are entitled to your own OPINIONS. I don't agree with all of yours.

I went a while back and listened to your audio examples. I really kind of don't pay much attention to your advice because it appears that most of your work uses "samples".

When you can start posting up some shit where you had to mic up real life drum kits and the like, let's talk!
 
And it has become VERY obvious that you have have totally misread my point in earlier threads, and what they were directed at! Go re-read the whole conversation. If you still don't understand, I might stomach trying to get even MORE basic than I have already.

;)
 
I've used an ATM25, TGX50, and SansAmp Bass Driver. Most recently I used a signal split into a SansAmp and into a silverface Bassman through a 2x15 cab, miced with an ATM25 about six inches or so off the grill (like so). The two signals were bussed together. The room was untreated, the recording strictly amateur. I was pleased with the results.

I'd love to get my hands on a 4033 and combine it with one of my dynamic mics.

I've close-miced a fairly loud 4x12 guitar cab before for a live band rehearsal recording (in an untreated 14"x18" room with a 10 foot ceiling), and the drum kit that was four feet away from the cab was wholly inaudible in the guitar track, if that's any indication as to the rejective capacity of a cardioid mic up close on a fairly loud cab.
 
Ford Van said:
And it has become VERY obvious that you have have totally misread my point in earlier threads, and what they were directed at! Go re-read the whole conversation. If you still don't understand, I might stomach trying to get even MORE basic than I have already.

;)
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haha! I enjoy this! it's all good, man. Yeah, maybe I did misunderstand your post. I don't take it personally, which I hope you don't either.

That's just how I am. I've always spoke out loud, even in kindergarden.


But hey, is it ever audio without the talking heads? (not the band) :)


Tooshay! Tooshay!
 
Producer ego is probably the most annoying thing in the world, regardless of who's right or wrong.
 
ryanlikestorock said:
Producer ego is probably the most annoying thing in the world, regardless of who's right or wrong.
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Amen!

But I'll stick my neck out and say that I'm even more annoyed by the CB radio guy across the street cussing out truckers while I'm trying to get a great guitar solo on tape.....
 
Producers ego is usually only annoying to those that have FAR less experience. ;)

Lee, apologies for the rather harsh tone. I am still kind of getting to know you, and I think I probably take the "tone" of some of your posts wrong.

Peace.
 
add in the fact that it takes a longer distance for a bass wave to fully travel and open. i would put a mic on the grill and at least away like 3 feet.
 
Ford Van said:
Producers ego is usually only annoying to those that have FAR less experience.
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If I could mix anything even close to "Heavy Brother" I would have an ego too.......but I wouldn't wear it on my sleeve.

Forgive my tone, please, but I dont understand why it has to be shoved in our faces all the time.....???

Sorry, Rhamett, for tossing this out there, away from your original question.....
 
I don't MAKE anybody read the words I write, nor make them click on the links to listen to my work.
 
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