ah, I wish I could afford a Royer mic
I've used an SM 81 for a room mic and it sounds great. I think that I posted a thing about how I stereo image guitars in another post, but hell, I'll give the run-down here.
Basically, two 609's placed differently....one really mid-heavy, roll-off @ 100, compress about 100 to 150/160, and it REALLY pulls the bottom through without being too bassy. The other 609 is trebly and much more gritty than the other, helps in that aspect. Mesh your levels with those, you're set, maybe just a hint of pre-eq if I feel it's necessary (like EQ on my board, right.). Stick the SM 81 about 6 feet back in a happy place, I've found that about 2-3 feet high or even like 6 feet high works well for a room feel. the level for this I keep reasonably low, you'll see why in a minute.
When I do guitars, I record 2 seperate tracks of identical (or near-identical, depending on the song. Rhythm, basically) and pan 2 of the 609's (a bottom and top mic) to one side, the other tracks to the other side. Keep the SM 81 mic centered.
In the metal that I record, it's very stop-go with a lot of little stints of just one guitar. Early on, I realized that I HATE the "dead" sound that you get when there's no room mic and only one guitar playing, because the song is going on and then just one guitar is playing, and it kinda makes me feel like I just suddenly went deaf in an ear.
So the 81 is centered and quiet, BUT when there is that one-guitar spot in a song, say in the right ear, you can hear a little bit, but enough, it in your left ear, so you don't have that "oh crap, did I just go deaf in one ear?" feeling.
I'm sure a ton of people do that, but I had an epiphany of trying it one day and I felt like a genius, so I'm just gonna keep letting myself feel awesome
