Recording Good Guitar Tones

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mattacaa

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Relatively new to recording electric guitars. I'm recording some rhythm guitars for a song of mine and I keep getting this fuzzy, distorted tone, which feels rather hollow. The first time I went directly in to my interface input and planned on reamping the tracks later when no one was home.

When I reamped I stripped my guitar track of any previous plugins (eq, comp, amp sim, etc.) and put it output to go through the reamp box which went to the amp head. I had a shure sm57 near the top of the cab away from the voice coil about 8 inches away, and a neumann tlm 102 on the other side of the cab. I played around with the mic positions multiple times, recording different ones trials and error, but wound up getting really fuzzy guitar tracks with no definition. I'm really looking for a tighter, thicker guitar sound. Any suggestions would be really awesome. Thanks



Background on gear
Focusrite saffire pro 18i20
Les Paul Trad Pro
Orange Dark Terror
Marshall JCM 800 1960 cab (slant)

Radial prormp (reampbox)
neumann Tlm 102
shure SM57
 
It's a general truism that you often need less distortion than you think... and that lots of the big, thick, awesome guitar tones you hear are made by tight playing and layering of mutliple tracks.

Post a clip for a better diagnosis - it's hard to give direct answers without hearing what you're talking about.

8 inches is pretty far away too... I'd be closer - almost up on the grill.

I'd try to nail the sound you want directly, before trying reamping.
 
I'd avoid layering. If you can't get one good guitar track, layers of bad tracks won't make it better.

Multiple mics multiply the problems too.

Focus on getting one good track with one mic. Start there.
 
As above. What you hear 5 ft away from the amp isn't what the mic hears when close to it. Just got to find the right balance.

Lower the gain and get the mic against the grill and test it out. There's no magic numbers to set the amp at. You just need to find the right recorded tone. Trial and error will do the job until you're more familiar with it.

:thumbs up:

EDIT* I was going to say, if in doubt, wait for Greg to chime in and he beat me to it!
 
I moved them close to the grill as well, and same thing except even worse. Maybe I'll tone the distortion down and try that. I'll post a clip later on today. Thanks
 
On the plus side, you're using good equipment. Les Paul, decent Orange head, good cab. No prob there.

I'm gonna make it very simple for you with some basic truths:

1) First and foremost, make sure you're dialing in a sound that's worth recording. Get your ear down by the speaker and see what it sounds like. I would not be surprised if your tone is not as good as you think it is.

2) Lose the reamp shit for now. Plug the guitar into the amp and record some samples the way nature intended it to be. Get that sorted and then you can branch out into more exotic techniques.

3) Lose the second mic. Get a good recording with one mic on one speaker. If you can't do that there's no reason to go further with additional mics.

4) Turn that shit up. When you think it's too loud, make it louder. I don't care what anyone says - louder sounds and records better. Amps sound thin and weak when it's just preamp tube fizziness doing all the work. Speakers sound stiff and brittle when they are not being exercised. Loud. Do it loud. You don't have to blow the windows out, but TV watching loudness does not get it done. Make it gig loud.
 
I'm not great at getting tones. (Cali II Hamer through a Roland Cube 50). But listen to Greg. If anyone can tell you how to get great tones...there he is. I'd love the chance to play through a dark terror with some greenbacks...sounds fun. Hey, you never mentioned what speakers are in the 1960??? G12T, V30 or ???
 
The JCM 800 cabs came with a variety of speaker choices without much in the way of knowing what's actually in them without taking the back panel off. I'm interested in knowing what's in there.
 
Ditto to everything that's already been said... but when you say...

mattacaa said:
.... I keep getting this fuzzy, distorted tone, which feels rather hollow....

....a neumann tlm 102 on the other side of the cab.
Click to expand...

...do you mean the back of the cab, and if so, are you making sure to flip the polarity of the back mic before combining them?
If you don't, that "hollow" sound may be coming from that.
 
Good point. I took it to mean the speaker across, but if he means the back, then yeah that's bad.....especially since a 1960 is a closed back cab.
 
Doubt he means he's miking the back of a 1960...never know, though.
 
I honestly wouldn't know off the top of my head if the 1960 is a closed cab....:D....it was just the way he said it, "the other side of the cab".
 
Lots of great advice here. I'll echo some things:

First, make sure you get the amp to your ear level so you can hear what it actually sounds like. If it's on the floor and you're standing, you're not hearing the tone your mic is going record.

Second, turn up the volume and turn down the distortion.

Third, play with the EQ controls until you hear a sound that you're in love with.

Fourth, stick a mic very close to the grill and throw your headphones on. Move the mic until you hear the same sound you fell in love with out loud as you do in the headphones.

Hit record.

For thick, tight rhythm guitars, you probably want to double the part. That means play it again, exactly the same. Typically you'll want to vary the tone slightly for a doubled part to avoid phasing issues, but you can do that in the DAW with EQ real easy. That's one of the things you no longer have to worry about in the digital recording era.

Additionally, many great rhythm guitar tracks have the dry DI signal blended in with the miked recording. It can add weight and punch.
 
I usually track l/r to get some sense of stereo and fill the space.
 
As said above, turning down the gain and turning up the volume was the biggest step for me in getting a good distortion sound. I find that I have to turn down the gain a lot compared to on stage to get a good sound, otherwise it just comes out sounding fuzzy and undefined. I don't turn the amp up loud enough to shake the plaster off the walls but it's loud enough for people not to want to be in the same room as it. Also, I position the mic (SM57) between the edge and centre of the cone but pointing at the centre (so it's 45 degrees to the grille). When I started, people were always telling me 'point the mic at the edge or it sounds too harsh' but I find that it lacks definition.
 
sounds like you need to just turn the gain down on the amp, and using the neumann tlm102 isn't the best idea, I would much rather use an sm57 any day over a tlm102...or a good ribbon mic
 
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