Sm57+MD421 Mic combo for Amp

[miroslav]

My sm57 sounds a little honky/nasal by itself. But not every engineer has my guitar/amp.

Yeah...that's what 57s do...but for sure, the amp/cab and your tone goals all go into the equation.

So what amp/cab is it...and what are the "core" guitar tones you're going after?

I also like that you said "fun"...because that's what my point was in my post above. I really do enjoy tracking. Some people hate it, and can't wait to sit down in front of the computer screens and mix monitors...but I have always enjoyed tracking the most. It's the time where as you say...you create the "core" sounds.

So trying out new stuff and going for less "comfortable" approaches can be quite rewarding (or sometimes a dead end too). I find that during tracking is where I can "hear" the goals of the production the best. After that, the edits and the overdubs and the mixing...that's just "work" to complete the process and add the finishing touches...IMO.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

If you're going to mix them together and pan them to the same position, the only thing that matters is if you like how it sounds. It will only change after that as a consequence of playback response differences. If you want to play with different distances and/or time shifting one vs. the other, whatever. Make it sound how you want it to sound.

If you're going to pan them apart then it's worth considering what might happen if the song gets played in mono. It's also worth considering the effect phase differences between the mics has on imaging. Your call. You can ignore if you wish.

While you're doing this, it might be worth checking polarity. Polarity and phase are closely related but not the same.

 

[grimtraveller]

There seems to be some kind of time constraint for many guys doing the home/project thing, not sure why...and a need for quick, repeatable solutions, where I tend to lean in favor of experimentation during tracking, and taking the time to find new things, but I'm not on any time constraint.

I'm on a serious time restraint.....I don't expect to live to 120 ! Gotta track those guitars and tamburas before I hit 90.

 

[ecc83]

You don't have to get your coat.

I do get what you were saying about the speaker movement...I just don't think those types of "phase" considerations would be easy to incorporate into hands-on mic alignment for guitar cabs...so for typical daily setups, it's best to just go with the basic ideas of speaker movement.

You are a scolar and a gentleman Miroslav (not to mention builder, top sound recordist, musician and probably several other great things he is too humble to mention!)

Now! If my mentioning of 'phase' across a cone was a bit left field? DOPPLER distortion is positively esoteric!
When you have been learning about acoustics and audio for nearly 60 years you see fashions come and go. Thirty something years ago it was 'Transient Intermodulation Distortion' (aka 'SID' and 'BLID') Basically, unless your power amps would do double duty as CB burner, i.e. had a bandwidth well int the RF region, you were stuffed. All bllox of course.

Doppler distortion came about around the same time and was for a while the subject of much debate. Where has this evil gone now?

Cones still move at the same rates and displacements and if anything have gotten smaller and displace further yet no mention of Mr D!

I must have read a good 100 reviews of monitors in the last 10 years many by leading speaker designers such as Phil Ward, in all that time I do not recall a single mention of Doppler distortion.

But I digress again. Bottom line: Sound on Sound Aug '07. Perhaps THE best dissertation on recording cabs extant?

Dave.

 

[miroslav]

You are a scolar and a gentleman Miroslav (not to mention builder, top sound recordist, musician and probably several other great things he is too humble to mention!) .

No...but I did stay at a Holiday Inn.

(It's a funny TV ad here in the states...might not mean anything to you).

 

[ecc83]

No...but I did stay at a Holiday Inn.

(It's a funny TV ad here in the states...might not mean anything to you).

Quite right, it doesn't. Don't give up the day job!

Dave.

 

[sasquatch]

Not that it matters in the grand scheme of rock n roll....

G

 

[miroslav]

View attachment 105535

It's interesting that even though the guitar speaker shows break-up...there is a uniformity to the break-up, all the way around the cone.
That was my point about being able to place a mic along the same diameter points, Left/Right/Up/Down, and still get the same tone...and that it's best to take the speaker motion as a whole when talking motion, rather then drilling down to what small, individual points on the cone are doing.

That's a great representation of the break-up in the images...that stuff we all crave with guitar speakers.

 

[JamEZmusic]

I'm going for metal tones, like machine head kinda tones. Funny enough I wasn't searching for it but came across a web page today where Robb Flynn talks about how he gets his tones and low and behold - sm57+md421, but favouring the 421 in volume. It's interesting. Rhythm tones sound great but my amp I don't think is the best for leads, I was slaving away today trying to get a good balanced tone. using 1 mic primarily, but in the end I switched to the 57 (on grill)+Condenser LDC in omni placed 1 foot back and I'm getting closer to what I want. still battling it out because I'm not there yet. Experimented with a whole bunch of pedalboard plugins in my re-amp chain, tried all sorts of overdrives/effects. attempts were futile though.

I have recently had a few lifechanges happen and I have a bit more free time to hone the craft. But I will probably be very busy all summer doing my normal job in construction I have been saving up specifically so I can take the winter off so time I have free has already been worked for. I really don't want to waste the time. maybe that is the wrong word? I guess time is not wasted if you spend a day in the studio with trial & Error even if you get knowhere because you will know what not to do next time! but.... prioritizing my time into pushing me forward to getting actual songs finished up quicker is my goal, I want to start working on composing as soon as I possibly can. setting up a portfolio etc.etc. time is so valuable to me right now. As soon as I break the back of the tone hunting I want to concentrate on writing songs and mixing primarily. Hoping one day I can make a penny or two out of this as well.

It's hard for me to pinpoint where I have the most fun.... I think it's that point in the mix when you get the low end in a groove knowing that at this point, you are close to finishing but you have ultimate freedom to do whatever you want to your mix without painstakingly trying to EQ everything to fit still, and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel after a lot of hard work. But I love the whole process.

I'm not too keen on working out a good technique to capture a good guitar tone today though, ear gets tired fast and I feel like I haven't got anywhere today. I may have something usable. I think I need to work on placing a mic out into the room somewhere, I think my amp sounds good in the room but when I put mics right up to the speaker there are some unpleasant qualities that just do not seem to sit right in the mix... oh well.

 

[miroslav]

This might be an odd thing for me to say, considering I still prefer to mic amps/cabs...but for Metal, there are quite a lot of nice amp sims that might work out better/easier for you. Check out Plugin Alliance...they rule with Metal amp sims.

It just seems like for Metal, the type of tones tend to be more "homogenized" throughout. IOW...you want very "even" sounding tone...whereas with other music genres, more "organic"..."reactive" tones are desired. So the Metal amp sims work out well for a lot of guys.

AFA trial & error...I look at it like a great learning experience, even if something totally fails, you learn. So IMO, it's never wasted time...but I get it, sometimes you just want to go with a know quantity, so you can move forward.

 

[JamEZmusic]

Yeah I need to invest in some amp sims, I've heard they have really improved. I used PODfarm and Guitar Rig 4 but never really got really great tones. Tones I am getting recently, even tohugh I am struggling on the lead tone still wins hand down. I did mess with the DI track today using my logics/amps and Guitar Rig 4 but struggled just as much. ha ha

 

[miroslav]

Yeah I need to invest in some amp sims, I've heard they have really improved. I used PODfarm and Guitar Rig 4 but never really got really great tones. Tones I am getting recently, even tohugh I am struggling on the lead tone still wins hand down. I did mess with the DI track today using my logics/amps and Guitar Rig 4 but struggled just as much. ha ha

Go here : All Plugins & Products - Plugin Alliance

Scroll down to the amps. You can download anything and use it for FREE...for 2 weeks.
They run monthly sales on individual items...but the best time to purchase a lot of stuff from them is during the Nov-Dec holiday sales...which just ended a couple of weeks ago, but once you create an account, they send emails when they have sales, and they also issue vouchers once you start buying their stuff.


Recently they started their subscription plans, so you don't have to buy, you just rent by the month/year. For someone that has none of their plugs, it may be a more cost effective way to go...but you never own any.
I'm a huge fan of all their plugins...I think I have about 80-90% of their line, but I picked it up over several years, so for me the subscription plan is not worth it at this point...though anything new, I have to continue to buy, but subscribers get it added to their plans automatically...and they have a few plans at different price points.
Trust me...if you demo their Metal style amp sims, you will probably like them. The owner of PA, Dirk...is a total Metal head.

 

[JamEZmusic]

I'm definitely going to try these out. I did experiment with lepau plugins, and I have the deadly sins impulse response pack, but there are so many I got overwhelmed with choices, this was about 3 years ago. This is how long I have been out of the game for. I remember I spent a week tone hunting and I gave up in the end because ran out of time ~ this is another reason why I want to work quickly. I am kind of carrying on from that point, except this time I will not stop until I am satisfied with results even if I have to spend more money.

Thanks for the link to the amp sims, it's great I can demo some. It's something I need to get anyway, even if I did choose at the end to re-amp with mic and cab because for songwriting/arranging purposes I do not want to mess around with mics whatsoever. Who knows, maybe If they are that good I won't bother with the amp anymore unless I want to pull mics back 6ft, or ear height as I am assuming you can't get those kinds of tones in amp sim software.

Will have a look tonight. thank you Miroslav

 

[GoodTimesRec]

This thread title interested me because I never got solid, repeatable, full, “album-sounding” guitar tone in my recordings until I bought a MD421 and used it in addition to my SM57 by lining up the capsules (the 421 ends up like a half inch behind the 57) and a LDC a few feet away. And then using Logic’s sample delay to make the close mics hit at the same time as the room mic. I’ll do a test recording to work out the delay on the close mics, and there’s no comb filtering/phase that way.

I use a Michael Joly-modified MXL2003 as the room mic and use RNP’s and UA Solo 610/110 preamps for my four guitar tracks (I take a DI through the 610 or 110 in case I need to re-amp but never have had to yet on my own recordings anyway). I started at but never left having the mics in the direct center of the speaker. I’ve never had a problem with the guitar not being bassy enough either. I can set these up in minutes now and get great amp tone every time.

There are a million ways to mic an amp but I’m sticking with this way for now since holy cow it’s working for me.

I have recent songs on Levi Hustle & The Denim Persuasion on the music tab if you want to hear the results I am getting. All the guitars on those tunes are mic’ed that way using a Pro Jr or Traynor 20W and different cabinets depending on the tone I want (or a bass cab for bass). Bass guitar is recorded the same way too but I blend the DI track in with the bass sometimes. I also apologize because I can’t sing but I need to do something with the random stuff I record!

UAD Distressors on all the individual bass guitar tracks in the UAD console, or 1176’s on the microphones and a 1073 on the DI for guitars. Huge, huge difference in quality from my SM57-only days!

I will also say the 421’s sound nicer on toms than the 57’s but I have to gate them because the ride cymbal bleeds a ton. Still, small price to pay for the tone!

 

[JamEZmusic]

It's great you saw this thread and chipped in. It really helps me out.

The LDC room mic, is this set to omni or any other specific polar pattern? Did you try experimenting with pushing the mic back further using logics sample delay in ms with the 1ft=1ms theory? You are obviously getting the results though i had a listen to your tracks and I dig! It's actually really amazing that you can use your mic combo fairly close to how I am but it still works so well for genre of music that is so vastly different. Also are you doing anything with the panning? I experimented with panning alternate mics opposite each other, so there is half the guitar part in each speaker instead each take isolated from the other. I don't know if it made a difference to the stereo image as I didn't see no easy way of AB'ing.

They say the 421 is like the ultimate tom mic.

Wish I had distressors

Screw it, mix is not finished yet and it's only an educational song for me to practise on, it's like the easiest song in the world to play but still trying to get it as polished as I can with proper tracking/mixing. My ears are way too trashed to carry on today, I feel like the bass is completely off mainly. and I seem to be having some mono issues and general balancing to do still. My lead tones are good enough for now, lot of improving to do, but rhythm tone should work when I balance properly.
https: //soundcloud.com/jamezmusic-1/test-1/s-bZcc3
To be honest, not that far from finished in reality. Just experimenting more than anything with stereo enhancers, and 3d positioning which is slowing me down a lot. Regardless if anything sticks out as really annoying, or something that can be easily fixed i would love to know about it. Cheers!

 

[GoodTimesRec]

Thanks for the kind words on my mixes! I have to say, it’s the mic combo that does the trick and I think so long as you accurately mic any amp you’ll get what the amp is putting out.

The LDC is a cardioid that I eyeball the height to be the same as the 421/57. I have the close mics delayed at 3ms, which does jive with the 1ms per foot theory. I put Logic’s play head at an identifiable point on the close mics and noted the time (setting the display to show milliseconds), then moved the play head to the room mic at the same-looking point in its wave file, and noted the millisecond difference. I would nudge the delay in 0.1ms increments earlier and later than 3ms to see if there was a change in tone and it does noticeably “gel” as the right sound when they line up right. They just sound off when not phase aligned. Then I just blend the three mics to taste and route them to a VCA to turn them down, and then to a bus that I can control with one fader. For panning, I’ll pan the bus instead of messing with any of the individual tracks.

Listening to your track on soundcloud, I think the guitars sound alright but it sounds like there’s a lot of the room in them. For my guits I left the room mic fader maybe about 25% as loud as the close mics, but that’s not a hard and fast thing. Also that amp reminds me so much of my old Kustom III Lead! The tone is just so spot on to what that amp used to give me. I would say zoom into the guitar mic tracks in your DAW and look for the waveforms to physically move up and down at the same time, and when they’re really locked in, then the whole spectrum of bass to treble opens up, it’s oddly magical. Either move them to line them up or delay the close mics to meet the room. Same with drums, I have everything meet the farthest-away microphone then they somehow end up working together in a great way. Hit the bass drum and watch its transient through every drum mic. Folks use the snare too but I like kick because I always had a problem in the past getting the kick to be clicky and also hefty. A sub kick mic helps a lot too

For bass and kick drum in the mix, I always struggled with that until I just turned up my monitors a lot more when mixing, and by using a calculator tool to figure out the optimum place for my monitors in the room. Until I run things through Ozone at the end, the drums are always the largest thing in the mixdown waveform. For bass guitar that’s mic’ed, the room mic tends to give me a lot of the pluck grit and I’ll have that mic higher up in the fader than I use it on guitars. I’ll bus the bass mics to a bass guitar bus and then saturate that with a tape machine plugin (love the UAD stuff here too! But you don’t need UAD to do this, just the technique). Also parallel processing by sending either the bus or all the individual tracks via sends to yet another bus that has heavy-or at least hefty-compression on it. It’s usually low in the fader but it doesn’t need to be loud to add that little bit extra to the tracks going through the mix normally. Use that parallel processing mainly on bass and drums but it can be used on anything that may be weak in the mix. Saturation and parallel processing will really bring that weak element back into the mix without overpowering the rest of the mix. The bass guitar, snare, kick, toms are all individually sent to parallel compression sends lately. If I need more transient, I increase the track or the instrument’s bus (if it’s a multi track thing like a guitar amp). If I need more heft/longevity I increase the parallel compression send-bus

 

[JamEZmusic]

We approach a lot of things in the same way, I appreciate you listening to the track. I'm a Logic user and I always phase aligned visually but you lose the ability to do quick A/B comparisons (thinking of it I guess I could just quickly undo/re-do) I still prefer to leave tracks in place if I can though. I never actually thought of re-setting the time counter at the top to display in ms and using the sample delay plugin to align your tracks. What a great idea that is sure to change my workflow a bit. Thanks for that! I probably learn something every day that Logic can do. I have just discovered the whole idea of LUFS and had strapped this across the master in logic limiting up as close to 0dbfs without any gain reduction and seeing the loudness, which is higher than expected. -10lufs. Might have squashed the mix too much woops. But snare sounds punchy still, I reckon I can get away with squeeing another 3db's out of it without too much degradation to the snare as this is probably the only thing that will get limited to get the -7LUFS that seems to be the standard for modern pop. Not sure if this is a good thing or not. . . . . .

It's mainly down to how I processed the bass though, the whole song is bass. I just did the usual "produce like a pro" method of using the clean DI for the sub 250hz using low pass filter, and the real amped recording high passed at 250. Except I squashed the hell out of the bass DI so the meters don't even fluctuate on Logics peak meters using 2 instances of waves mv2 in series to squash the hell out of it with both downwards and upwards compression (overkill probably). Then I just copied the track and distorted heavily with a low blend for intelligibility on smaller speakers. that's it. . .

Parallel'd the drums, squashed the hell out of them aswel, but for snare I also copied that to a new track with transient designer with sharp attack, and minimum sustain, blended in. added a plate verb to snare bus.

rhythms are pretty much left as is. just a minor cut at 5khz to adjust warmth/brightness ratio to better suit.

my leads suck (in context at least)... mainly this is what will finish the mix up. and the acoustic guitar seems too muddy to me, so will cut some 350ish and call it a day with fresh ears. Probably too much room, I have a lot going on low in the mix on the lead though, it's probably this which I need to dial back. so I have -
Multiple copies of lead guitar one of them is -Pitched octave down, -3cents detuned L +3R, and then the same again at 6cents, 9cents, 12cents, slaptback distorted delay, and some weird hi frequency exciter morph thing. all blended in for stereo width and thickness. at this point I couldn't hear straight anymore but everything is routed to a seperate fader so tomorrow I can just lower it appropately.

Got all the same processing on the doubled acoustic guitar aswel. This is why the mix is hitting -10lufs because of the high density of tracks I guess....

simple mix! It's why I chose this song to practise with. I probably spent about 20 minutes re-learning the song, i did a cover of this probably like 5 years ago but the whole mix sucked balls. and I have actually done very little mixing in the last 5 years, I only finished 1 other song in all that time I think. Family commitments.

The kick drum is really tricky to place in the mix. I don't really know whether i'm in the right place unless i walk around the room. There is a really fine line between too much and too little. And then using EQ to balance click to oompf with 60hz oompf, and 4-8k click. I think my low end is way off. It will probably become really apparant to me when i listen again tomorrow, but right now I have literally blown my ears out for the day and I guess there is only 1 thing left to do . . . . start a new song.

Quality comment though, I learned a lot by your process. I really liked the Logic phase alignment tips.

Edit: I'm using sonarworks to give me a flatter listening experience and also measured out my monitors from left to right wall with minimum of 18" away from any boundary, listening in equalatteral triangle. the basics are right at least. no treatment though. not yet anyway

Cheers man.

 

[ecc83]

Re 'Metal' I have read that the thrashers are quite into solid state power amps (big mothers!) and are not cork sniffing valve snobs?

There is a series of articles in SoS about the production of metal tracks. A very technical and precise process! Not at all the 'heads down, let's just go for this ***t!' mayhem you might have suspected?

Will look it up.

Dave.

 

[GoodTimesRec]

So this is gonna have a few screenshots, but these first two screenshots are the whole mixing board for the "Late At Night And Down The Street" tune (as that's stereo and also has electric guitars in it, of the three I've got so far on my site). You can see that for drums and multi-mic stuff the delays go on first! I by far process and route the kick drum the most it seems. But to be honest that was always the hardest thing to have prominent and full yet not killing everything else. So it is what it is. And you can see how I route the guitars, drums, bass, etc. I do most of the 'mixing' with the buses to the right (and if I automate something, like I did in the guitar solo bus it moves them away to the left, which is annoying). The VCA's...I don't really track hot, I keep my meters in the Apollo (and every other interface I've ever used) to peak in the yellow range of the meters but man the amp tracks are just too loud unless I VCA them down a bit. I could probably just turn the tracks down more at their main faders but I feel weird having them too low. I only really EQ if I hear something that sounds terrible, like my snare needed another moongel but until I put it on there was a nasty-to-me ring out of it which I reduced with a generous eq dip. I also do the Huart bass DI method! ...although it looks like on this instance I muted the bass DI and ended up not using it. Sometimes there's actually too much bass! I also take his advice and dip a little bit of the drumkit master track 350-ish hz as that does open up some room for the rest of the instruments a bit:



Anyway, after all that routing I use the Neve 33609 into the ATR-102 tape machine on the main bus. It shows the max peak at -1.4 db but honestly the mix is mostly around -9 to -3 db for the most part with a couple times it going up higher. Since I got the Apollo/UAD plugs, my mixes are hotter than I've ever done them but hey it sounds good to me. I also try to wait until I've tracked everything until I put these plugs on the main out so I don't get too deep in mixing until everything is there to mix. Until then I will use a very light Platinum Analog Tape setting in Logic's compressor, with the wet/dry turned below 50% and barely over 1db of compression:


Then I make a new project with Ozone on it, and do 'mastering' from that. I get pretty good LUFS with just the three plugs in Ozone 8 and am on the 6th version of the mix (I make new tracks and import each new mix, mute the old). It isn't necessary I guess but it helps me keep the mix and the post-mix sweetening separate:


And before going into Logic when tracking, the bass guitar, electric/acoustic guitars, vocals, congas, and the room mic for the drums (the lone transient designer all the way on line 16) all go through various plugins in the UAD console. I have tracks 1-4 set for bass (the distressors are on for that right now as I have the amp set up currently) or guitar, 5-6 for congas (with line 4 having the dbx160 on the amp room mic, which I just turn around to face out the closet toward the congas in the bedrooom) lines 7-8 for acoustic guitars or just line 7 for vocals (which I have the plugs on for here):

 

[GoodTimesRec]

The kick drum is really tricky to place in the mix. I don't really know whether i'm in the right place unless i walk around the room. There is a really fine line between too much and too little. And then using EQ to balance click to oompf with 60hz oompf, and 4-8k click. I think my low end is way off. It will probably become really apparant to me when i listen again tomorrow, but right now I have literally blown my ears out for the day and I guess there is only 1 thing left to do . . . . start a new song.

You know even after placing my speakers according to a room calculator's math AND treating the room with some rockwool panels (which does indeed help!) I got a far punchier bass out of my speakers in the listening position, but I still end up playing the song and walking out of the room and down the hall to make sure that everything sounds even. You can hear something either totally take over or totally drop out of a mix if you do that! I've never yet had that method cause what I turned up/down to be too overbearing or too removed either, so it seems to actually work

edit to add: I only really compress the hell out of kick/snare/drumkit bus tracks, I try to keep good dynamics in otherwise. More recently I started using saturation plugins--Logic's overdrive if used right, Phat FX's saturation, the Klanghelm SDRR which is very good and cheap, and most recently just driving the track through the UAD Studer tape machine. I definitely compress stuff, but like on the bass guitar, I have the distressors set to 3:1 and they don't go into the yellow except on extreme picks/plucks. I think it's using more mics and having them work together is what really makes the sound bigger. More likely a combo of these things!