SM57 sounding too harsh.

DinoRock said:
Please ignore those on this forum who prefer trolling to sharing knowledge and working as part of a community. They have chased away many more than they have assisted. This forum certainly would be more vibrant if such folks were more generous and less narcacistic in their approach to participation.

1. Check out an international treasure in Glyn Johns and 2. consider the option of moving the mic to a different position, including away from the speaker. While not SOP, you might get what you are looking for.
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Dino... OK, I know Greg can be a abrasive fucker at times but 1. I barely know of a single forum user (myself included and loads of other knobheads that he doesn't even like) that he hasn't helped get a good tone and 2. have you heard his tones?
 
DinoRock said:
Gly Johns has done some excellent interviews recently - book, interviews etc. He talks about this issue. If you put the mic near the amp you will not get the tone that an audience is used to hearing, period. Distance impacts tone.
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The audience hear what the mic pics up anyway and it will be then coming at them out of the PA live. You won't be distant micing a cab live; it will sound like a bag of dicks. Like when recordeding you dial in your amp tone and mic position so you like what is either laid down in your DAW or what is coming out of the house PA.
 
DinoRock said:
Please ignore those on this forum who prefer trolling to sharing knowledge and working as part of a community. They have chased away many more than they have assisted. This forum certainly would be more vibrant if such folks were more generous and less narcacistic in their approach to participation.

1. Check out an international treasure in Glyn Johns and 2. consider the option of moving the mic to a different position, including away from the speaker. While not SOP, you might get what you are looking for.
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LOL. Noob. How the hell would you know who has helped whom on this forum and how many times? Wind your neck in.
 
JDOD said:
Dino... OK, I know Greg can be a abrasive fucker at times but 1. I barely know of a single forum user (myself included and loads of other knobheads that he doesn't even like) that he hasn't helped get a good tone and 2. have you heard his tones?
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This is not personal. I think this forum has a lot to offer and wish it were more of a community and was more welcoming. Yes, I have listened to the posted work (typically SC) of many people here and have messaged them with my (positive) reaction to their work. Yes, I have appreciated the time some have spent listening to my work and others and their incitefull comments. I have stated so publicly and have sought out their input publicly and privately. And, yes, I have seen people leave this forum and newcomers being made to feel foolish and unwelcome by some of these same folks.
 
DinoRock said:
This is not personal. I think this forum has a lot to offer and wish it were more of a community and was more welcoming. Yes, I have listened to the posted work (typically SC) of many people here and have messaged them with my (positive) reaction to their work. Yes, I have appreciated the time some have spent listening to my work and others and their incitefull comments. I have stated so publicly and have sought out their input publicly and privately. And, yes, I have seen people leave this forum and newcomers being made to feel foolish and unwelcome by some of these same folks.
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There's a big difference between newcomers joining the forum and seeking help, stating what they do and don't know and want to achieve. I'm relatively new to the forum, even though I'd been cocking about with recording for years but without ever learning anything about it.

What pisses off the very experienced people is when new people join and start passing off opinion (usually 2nd hand opinion) as fact.
 
Alright yall, let's just relax here. My mic from the audience comment was just a joke. No need to get butthurt.
 
DinoRock said:
This is not personal. I think this forum has a lot to offer and wish it were more of a community and was more welcoming. Yes, I have listened to the posted work (typically SC) of many people here and have messaged them with my (positive) reaction to their work. Yes, I have appreciated the time some have spent listening to my work and others and their incitefull comments. I have stated so publicly and have sought out their input publicly and privately. And, yes, I have seen people leave this forum and newcomers being made to feel foolish and unwelcome by some of these same folks.
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There is a lot of knowledge here. Not everyone on this board is pleasant to deal with, but, you will just have to learn to filter, ignore and deflect to gain the most from this board. There are many you know what they are doing, many who think they know what they are doing (I fit in this category) and some just throwing crap out on the wall. Only time will be able to tell you who is who.

Don't let a few drive you away. Brush it off, I mean after all, it is just text. If a million dollars was in a pile of crap, you would still pick it up. Just take the good ignore the bad.
 
DinoRock said:
Gly Johns has done some excellent interviews recently - book, interviews etc. He talks about this issue. If you put the mic near the amp you will not get the tone that an audience is used to hearing, period. Distance impacts tone.
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You must have read his interview in Tape Op. Wonderful to be recording in a pro studio room with $5K+ mics. Not everyone has that option. His comments in TO were about recording Entwistle's bass tone.
 
mjbphotos said:
You must have read his interview in Tape Op. Wonderful to be recording in a pro studio room with $5K+ mics. Not everyone has that option. His comments in TO were about recording Entwistle's bass tone.
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That right there is the potential danger of taking the words of these ancient pros at face value IMO. People don't seem to get that. If Glyn Johns says something, it must be fucking gospel, right? No. Not always. Old pros in pro studios have done countless tricks and neat things in their days. Most of that stuff simply does not apply to a modest home studio in a spare bedroom or basement with budget gear. That doesn't mean you can't try it, but don't fucking take that shit as the word of the Lord.
 
Greg_L said:
That right there is the potential danger of taking the words of these ancient pros at face value. People don't seem to get that. If Glyn Johns says something, it must be fucking gospel, right? No. Not always. Old pros in pro studios have done countless tricks and neat things in their days. Most of that stuff simply does not apply to a modest home studio in a spare bedroom or basement with budget gear. That doesn't mean you can't try it, but don't fucking take that shit as the word of the Lord.
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Greg - I completely agree. But, I also believe that knowledge is power. Being aware of history, understanding differences between high-end analogue studios and a modern home recording studio, and having a large set of techniques in one's toolbag, all pay dividends. IMHO, one can and should learn from a variety of situations, whether it's Glyn Johns w major artists in old, top notch studios, or Springsteen doing an album on a portable analogue system, or folks doing home studio work.
 
DinoRock said:
Greg - I completely agree. But, I also believe that knowledge is power. Being aware of history, understanding differences between high-end analogue studios and a modern home recording studio, and having a large set of techniques in one's toolbag, all pay dividends. IMHO, one can and should learn from a variety of situations, whether it's Glyn Johns w major artists in old, top notch studios, or Springsteen doing an album on a portable analogue system, or folks doing home studio work.
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Totally agree. Learn something from everyone and everything. I'm just saying that these pros do/did things that we can't, they did it in stellar environments that we don't have, and often people read that crap and regurgitate it like it's a standard process that everyone should be doing.
 
DinoRock said:
Greg - I completely agree. But, I also believe that knowledge is power. Being aware of history, understanding differences between high-end analogue studios and a modern home recording studio, and having a large set of techniques in one's toolbag, all pay dividends. IMHO, one can and should learn from a variety of situations, whether it's Glyn Johns w major artists in old, top notch studios, or Springsteen doing an album on a portable analogue system, or folks doing home studio work.
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Knowledge is power, knowing how something was done in the past is good, but it is the full chain that gives the final results. Room, amps, mics, outboard gear, mixer, all of that contributed to the final sound. It is great to know, but the relevancy of it today questionable.

But, distance does play into mic sound. That holds true regardless of what, where or when. The usual advice on this board when discussing mic placement, experiment and listen. Usually close mic technique is used by most on the board because we don't want the room in the recording. Distant micing will give you the room. In recording, we are not always going for the audience sound, we are going for an optimal recording tone sound.

To say one way is the only way or the best way, is wrong advice.
 
CMolina, I take it you're happy with the tone you are getting from that amp before you put the mic to it? If so then you issue is probably mic placement. Since others have covered that, let me ask you this: How are you monitoring as you make your adjustments? Is the amp in the same room? If so, you're getting bleed through your headphones that might make it harder to hear what the mic is actually picking up. If there is any way to get the amp out of the room, say by running the cables under a door, it's worth doing. If that's not possible, try improvising some kind of baffles (a couch, large chair, stacks of pillows, etc.) to cut down on the amount of direct sound that is getting back to you. The better you can hear what the mic is picking up, the better you'll do at making small adjustments in mic placement that make a big difference in recorded tone.
 
Robus said:
CMolina....
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He hasn't posted back in a week (maybe he's just lurking)...so we don't know if he's tried anything different, solved his problem, or just moved on and forgotten about this thread.

I use to hate the SM57 for similar reasons...always came off harsh to my ears...and if you moved of the center too much, you lost the bite.
Anyway...after moving to a Cascade Fat Head, I initially loved it, but then started to feel like it was too dark...so then I tried the AKG D1000E, which sat right in-between the two....and I went with that for a lot of stuff.
I then got a new amp, and didn't like either the Fat Head or D1000E...they weren't giving me the crunchy Brit tone I was after...and I came full circle and back the SM57. :D

So there is no one "tone"...and IMO, there is no one mic that works on everything. Granted, if you dial in a singular tone that you use over and over because that's the style of music you are doing and that's the tone for it...then you use the same amp(s), the same mic, the same position, and it's a no brainer....but if you're doing lots of variety...you have to try different things.
I use all three mics now...depending on what tone I'm after, since the each have a different flavored sweet spot.

AFA what the OP is after...the White Stripes sound (or the stuff about Glyn Johns)...you can't assume anything about what they used and how they did it.
They may have used an SM57...but there are a bunch of other variables that would figure into the equation and the final sound...so basically, if you want to nail it like they did, you have to almost replicate all those variables in your home studio...which can be difficult if you don't have all the main ingredients that they had. I mean...it's not just the mic.
 
I have very similar experiences, Miroslav. A small tube amp close miced with an SM57 was all I used for a long time. Then I got an inexpensive ribbon mic--the M-Audio version of what you have, I think--and that was all I used for a while. Lately I'm back to the 57. The ribbon mic needs a brighter tone out of the amp, but it's got its benefits. Set well back from the amp, it catches a silky guitar tone that has a lot of uses in my music. It also seems to work well with a lower volume coming from the amp, whereas the 57 just kind of gives up in disgust if the amp isn't pushing pretty hard. Or so I've found.
 
I saw an article linked here a couple of months ago where a guy did some experiments with mic positioning and charted the results, in an attempt to quantify some of the variables. I know that things are a little different on paper than they are in reality, but it was an interesting read anyways. No earth-shattering revelations but some reinforcement of what you'd think: pulling the mic away from the speaker reduces the low end, and putting the mic off-axis makes almost no difference in frequency response whatsoever until you get to pretty extreme angles.

I can't imagine a situation where I'd want to put a dynamic mic farther away than maybe an inch from the grille cloth. Seems like you'd get to a point of diminishing returns really quickly there.
 
Tadpui said:
putting the mic off-axis makes almost no difference in frequency response whatsoever until you get to pretty extreme angles.
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That's one position I never use anymore. Off-axis is almost pointless unless, like you said, you go full ridiculous with it. I get way better variation from going close or far or across the cone. If I had a gun to my head and had to record a good guitar track as fast as possible, I'd grab one 57, put it about halfway across the speaker cone, straight on axis, about an inch or two off the grill. I know in a pinch that mic in that position on any speaker will give me a very usable result.
 
Forums, asking questions, reading interviews and adopting other's techniques is all well and good. But...

It is no substitute for figuring it out yourself. Experiment with different mics, different placements.

A seperate control room helps cause you can hear what the mic is getting. But if you dont have that option, you can still experiment.

Unlike tape, with digital you can record it a million times.

Record, play it back, try different amp settings, mics, distance, position, etc.

If experimentation takes you a month, no big deal

Experience is a much better teacher than any forum or article.

The problem nowadays is some just want it given to them. Tell me how is the mantra of the generation.

Nope, best to learn for yourself.

:D
 
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