Microphone isolation

tuttlem

tuttlem

New member
Hey everybody,

I'm trying to record some guitar parts here at home by putting an SM57 in front of my guitar amp. While I'm recording, I notice a lot of the acoustic sound of my electric guitar is being picked up (e.g. my amp isn't turned up loud enough).

The simple solution to this problem is just to turn my amplifier up more however we've only just bought a newborn home from the hospital, so I can't be too loud :(

Do you know of any techniques I could use to isolate the microphone so that I no longer hear the "unplugged" version of my electric guitar? Whilst it's not intended for this purpose, I'm wondering if it could be solved simply using a cheap reflection filter around the mic.

Any help you could provide would be appreciated.

Cheers.
 
I'm having trouble understanding how you're getting the string sound in your mic. What mic are you using? If you're using a cardioid dynamic mic, almost touching the grill of the amp, (I'm assuming it's pointed towards the amp :D) and you're sitting some distance away from the amp, this shouldn't be a problem.
 
Move the mic closer to the speaker and move yourself away from the amp/mic! A SM57 will not pick up much sound from 'behind' it, so make sure you are standing in direct line with it.
 
It's not so much the string sound per-se, it's more the very metallic attack sound you get when you hit the strings of an electric guitar that's not plugged in. The mic is a SM57 - it was about 2 inches away from the grill -- I'll stuff it in there almost on the grill and see if that helps.

hehehe... yeah, it's pointed towards the amp -- sitting some distance away from the amp (this is within 2 metres). I can't help that limitation, it's a small home studio!
 
ahhh! .. good point, it won't pick up behind it. I'll also do that. I will move the mic closer, I can't move any further away from it -- which is the problem I think.
 
Turn the other way, away from the amp/mic. Last solution - crank it and record fast before the wife and baby complain!
 
mjbphotos said:
Turn the other way, away from the amp/mic. Last solution - crank it and record fast before the wife and baby complain!
Click to expand...

hahahaah... I can hear them both complaining about your "Last Solution" already :) It's all good, I've give this a go - thanks for the hints/tips.
 
guitaristic said:
Just move farther away. Is it really that hard to think of that?
Click to expand...

That does make a lot of sense, and it is a very obvious solution - I'm quite restricted by space, so I was just looking for different options. I was stuck for answers and I thought others may have run into these problems in the past.
 
mjbphotos said:
Read his posts, he's limited by cord length and room size.
Click to expand...

tuttlem said:
That does make a lot of sense, and it is a very obvious solution - I'm quite restricted by space, so I was just looking for different options. I was stuck for answers and I thought others may have run into these problems in the past.
Click to expand...

If you literally can't get any farther away from the amp without face-planting into a wall, you've got entirely different problems...you must have that amp turned down waaaay low. Maybe just wait till baby grows up a little?
 
Hello,
I've already faced a similar situation: from a small room adjacent to the baby's room I wanted to mic my amp with a cardioid LDC but it would pick up to much of the "ambiance" noise. Although I have a cheap reflection filter, I never tried it for this application because I finally settled for recording using amp simulation plugins.

I don't know about the guitar gear your using for this, but if it's modest in terms of sound quality and that you're recording using a computer with some decent configuration for the job, there are free amp simulators out-there which makes wonders, but this comes with a learning curve to dial-in some good tones.

Good luck
 
Another simple solution is to buy a DI box and live with it until you can turn your amp up. Plenty of people here (including me) can get very good recordings using a DI box and headphones (for recording the performance, not mixing).
 
Thanks for all the responses everybody. We did some "hallway testing" to see exactly how loud I can push my amp before it gets too loud and I have been able to push the amp just that little bit more. Coupling this with putting the microphone as close as I can to the grill has given me some good results.

I've got an AXE-FX sitting in the rack that I normally DI a signal to. I really like a lot of the amp simulations around, I just wanted to try something a little more "real".

Thanks again!
 
The funny thing is that babies will often grow accustomed to whatever they hear. We often feel that we have to go creeping around so as not to wake them, yet find that they'll wake up to the almost inaudible creek of a floorboard.
I tend to have the TV up quite loud {I used to record videos on 'Long play' so the volume quality was lame} and when my kids were babies, I'd stay up through the night with them watching TV and they slept through it all.
I guess they're all different.
 
Isn't it about time your wife visited her mother with the kid? Grandparents always want to play with kiddywinks...
 
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