miking a P.A. suggestions

[Wide Awake]

I have been miking my P.A. speaker because I like what it does to the sound of my keyboards and acoustic-electric guitar....rich, full bass and treble and less of a sterile D.I. sound, does wonders for drum machine sounds. I am using a single dynamic mic and I am wondering if that is the best type of mic for the job or will a condenser mic be a better choice ? Perhaps a combination of mics ? If anyone has experience I would love to know your techniques. The P.A. cabinet has a 15 inch woofer with a driver on top and the wattage is 350 watts.

 

[James HE]

Have you tried combining the miced speaker with the direct signal? give it a shot...

-jhe

 

[virtual.ray]

In general terms,condenser mics usually do better at portraying fine details of a source,because they react faster to transients(the first few milliseconds of a sound)and are generally more sensitive than dynamic mics.This doesn't mean that you will like one better for the app you mentioned,however.I'm just trying to give you an idea of what to expect.Cheers!

 

[Wide Awake]

Thanks for the advice. James HE--I have been splitting the signal using a stereo effects box and recording DI and miking the cabinet or my guitar amp. I plan on buying a direct box or splitter box to do this correctly but haven't figured out what I need yet. I'm also trying to find out if my acoustic guitar is sending out an unbalanced signal and what I need to convert it to balanced...perhaps a direct box will work. virtual.ray--I am planning on buying a condenser mic soon and I will experiment with it. I'm really new to recording and frankly my head hurts trying to learn all I can and still have the time and energy to write songs. This is a great hobby and I'm loving it....and it's damn expensive. I used to record all MIDI and keyboards straight to a mini-disc recorder and it was simple. Now I have 16 tracks, MIDI tracks, virtual tracks and the possibilities for layering and experimenting are huge.

 

[virtual.ray]

Yup!