NEED help Micing a Combo Amp!!!

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Mbest

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I am trying to mic a Marshall combo amp. I am recording in a 1000 sq ft concreate basement. I am tracking to a Roland VSX-880EX, using an SM58 about one inch from one of the speakers, and a room mic about 15 ft directly in front of the amp. For the room mic, I have tried a Beyers, EV RE16, and an Audio Technica, and the all sound pretty close (The Beyers has a little more signal strength, so that is the one that I am using). I am using a Mackie 1202 for the mic pres. I am recording a distortion guitar using the overdrive on the Marshall.
My problem is that no matter how I mix the two channels, I can't get the recording to sound as full and tight as the amp sounds in the room.
I know that it is not my monitors, because the drums sound great!
Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
bear in mind that because of the imperfections (however many or few that may be) in the mic pickup combined with the utter lack of room ambience picked up by having your mic on the cab can make a huge difference. you can try moving around your mic (closer to the edge of the cone/cones=bassier, closer to the center=more trebly), add reverb after your mic pre if you can, or, like most people trying to get some real punch do (in combo with the other thoughts mentioned), record the same guitar bits over and over onto the same track. most heavier music involves from one to several overdubs before they get "that" sound.
 
I don't know how many tracks you have left on Roland VS but you need at least two rhythm guitar tracks which are then panned panned left and right... if you've got space for 4 ie 2 per side then that'd be better.

My suggestion would be to take the SM58 with the pop filter removed, place it just off axis and about 1/2 an inch in front of the speaker grill... and then crank your amp!
 
OK

According to these replys, it sounds like multiple guitar tracks are the way to go. The only problem is that this piece is difficult to play and to even get one track down, the guitarist has to do several punch-ins. There is no way he could consistantly record more than one track.
Would using the original performance a second time with delay on it do the trick?
 
yeah, a tiny bit of delay and bouncing onto another channel can help open things up a bit too, though i theoretically like multiple dubs just because of the interesting things two slightly different tracks do together :)
 
I dont know where this "reverb to guitars" thing started but its definetly not the way to go. Ecspecially on distorted guitars this will lead to a very "washy" mix.(Very indirect)
Your main problem using two mics is always the phase-correlation. The best way to avoid that is moving the room mic back and forth untill it sounds right. Another way is to slightly delay the direct mic. If you are recording to computer you can easily move the room-mic-track untill it matches the direct-mic-track.
If you are using the same track to fatten up the mix you should also apply some EQ to it. Just delaying it will provide you some extra phase problems.
 
yeah, i generally just use an x-y pair of mics to record everything. it sounds good enough for me.
 
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