need help micing high gain guitar

[tjpaudio]

Alright so I have a great sounding rig... I run my guitar into a splitter that drives two 100watt tube heads and each goes to one side of a stereo 4x12 cab. I have 2 sm57's, an at3035, an e609 and some sennheiser drum mics as well as a d112 kick mic. I've been using the condenser a few feet back and the sm57 and e609 closer, but i'm having this problem. I get this real boomy low-mid sound on all mics whenever theres any kind of chug riffing... I've rolled the almost entirely off on both amps but its still there. I can eq it out to some degree but I dont consider that a solution. Even the condenser which isn't at all close to the speaker picks it up. I'm thinking maybe the cab i'm using just accentuates it? I don't know, if anyone has some good advice for micing a setup like this, let me know please.

 

[snow lizard]

If the cabinet is on the floor or close to any walls or corners you might be getting early reflections that exaggerate the bass.


sl

 

[laststartoshine]

well, does it sound like that just when you're in the room with it? or just when it's coming through the mics?

 

[Dani Pace]

I had a similar problem useing a single 100 watt amp. Added a couple of bass traps to my live room and the problem of boominess went away. The interesting part to me was that I had not noticed the boominess when just playing but it was very obvious on recordings.

 

[tjpaudio]

Yea, I only hear it on the mics, although I can vaguely hear it if i'm listening for it now. Its a 14x16 room with stuff everywhere, my whole setup is there (gear and details at myspace.com/projecttrevor) I've got decent gear but tight quarters to work with so I'm open to creative solutions.

 

[prestomation]

Put it up on a chair etc. Due to proximity effect, you'll probably want to roll off everything below ~100hz anyway.

 

[chessrock]

Tracking a 100-watt amp in a tight space seems a little overkill.

.

 

[amra]

Turn the close mic (or in this case mics) 45 degrees or even a little more off axis, and try putting them more inline with the speaker cone. That ought to cut down on that woof some...

 

[FALKEN]

turn down.

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

turn down.

Normally I'd disagree, but in that small of a space it's probably one of the better options. You're not gonna get as good of a sound out of the rig turned down, but if it cuts down on the "woofiness" to any large degree, it may be better to turn down and see what kind of tones you can get. As a general rule, it's better to have a tube amp turned up to just below the edge of where the speakers start to distort in an un-flattering manner to get the best huge mean aggressive tube distortion sound. However, you're not gonna get that in a small untreated room either, so it's give & take...

 

[tom18222]

turn the gain down. its not about how it sounds inthe room, its about how it soundsin the mix. you dont need as much gain as you think, because going through the recording process adds more gain to it then it was recorded with,

 

[legionserial]

Also...crank that midrange up if it ain't already!

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

Another two great points. Also also (points to those who catch the reference there ), with the gain a bunch lower than you think, record 2-4 takes and layer them on top of eachother. THAT will give your mix the balls you're looking for!

 

[gcapel]

get 50 watt or less tube amp to track though. You just have to find that medium where its loud enough to sound good but not so loud that your border line max'ing out spl's on the mic. Also watch your gain staging on your mic preamp. If you over drive it , you will be dead in the water no matter what.

 

[tjpaudio]

Alright, heres some quick facts to clear some things up. Both amps are going to a volume pedal in their FX loop, so I've allready reduced the volume as much as I can ( they are not nearly as loud as you might think after this, and the tone doesn't suffer too badly because its between the pre and power amps ) While using a smaller amps sounds like a good idea, it misses the point. The point is I'm a guitarist with a killer sounding rig that I've been building for yearrsss now and I want to track it in my apartment. The mids are allready cranked and as I stated earlier the bass is almost entirely rolled off. Gain is slightly lower than what use live but I can't really touch it too much because I use all the gain in my rig to get really nice sounding pinched harmonics that go into divebombs, as well as trills and all sorts of other whammy bar tricks - so basiclly I'm a player that cheats with gain and i need it. As for how I'm driving the preamps - its a presonus firepod so I make sure there is ZERO clipping (as I understand it, clipping in an A/D setup just results in messed up data and not cool harmonic overtones as with tubes)

Anyways I'm about to make a mess ripping my rig. I'm gonna see what putting it on a chair does for me.

As for bass traps, does anyone have any home made solutions for this? I.E. I had some great results with mattress pads from walmart in the past.

Thanks guys

-Trevor

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

Basically, there are only a couple of options.

1 - The sound is coming from the cab. If so, you'll have to either move the cab, modify the cab, get a different cab, or adjust your settings (which I know you don't want to do).

2 - The sound is coming from the room. If this is the case, try to isolate the cab/mics somehow (iso booth or thick heavy moving blankets) or try a different room.

3 - The sound is coming from the mics (unlikely). The only way this could be the case is if either the mic is damaged/sucks (not the case here), or you're pushing WAY too many spl's (also unlikely in your case) and it's distorting the diaphragm.

Most likely, it's the actual tone/cab that's making the woofy noise, e.g. you're overloading the cab with bass, probably due to the way your amps work. In this case, basically the only thing you can do is try a different cab, a different amp, or adjust your settings somehow. Since you're recording, it's probably not going to affect your tone to cut your wattage in half and use only one amp for the whole cab in mono. You're recording in mono anyway, so on tape you shouldn't be able to tell the difference.

*edit: something I didn't think of: it could be your guitar/pickups. Try a different guitar just to see if the problem still exists, regardless of tone.

 

[tjpaudio]

alright

so i wrapped my cab in a shitload of blankets and the result was exactly what i needed. Thanks to everyone that added insight, if you want to check out a sample myspace.com/projecttrevor and its the last one with the drums (electric)

Thanks guys.

-Trevor