DrewPeterson7
Sage of the Order
Been thinking about this lately - my aporoach has always been informed by that old (and amazing) Slipperman tutorial, where pertinent to this particular question is, see if you can find a favorite speaker on a 4x12, then put your mic in front of that one.
He kind of bypassed the while question of a single mic vs multiples, though, and as I'm wrapping up tracking a project and getting ready to start reamping, I've been thinking a bit about this.
I'll rerun the "stick your ear in front of it and listen at volume" test again to make sure that my preferences (or, hell, the speakers - it's a cab I've owned for 15 years now) haven't changed with time, but I've usually mic'd the lower left speaker, facing the cab. SM57 on the grill, just off the dust cap, and *something else* (usually a MD421, and that's been winning all the shootouts I've done so far) on the same speaker, a little further out, in part because it captures higher highs AND lower lows, and in part because this help deepen and thicken the SM57. Also right on the grill (I've tried more distant approaches, but for what are at the end of the day still hard rock tones whatever I may be doing with them, proximity effect and immediacy always seem to win out), then fart around with the two mics out of phase until they sound spectaclarly badly, then bring them back into phase to get. phase-coherent recording.
But, after doing some testing with a third WA87 in the mix the other day and by necessity having to put it on a differtent speaker (lack of real estate) I found myself wondering, real estate aside, are there any theoretical advantages to micing two diffrent speakers like this? Cab is four V30s, so speaker choice isn't an issue.
I know the "right" and I put that in air quotes for a reason, answer here is "use your ears," but let's be honest - close mics on a guitar cab, a couple milimeters difference in position is going to change your sound enoguh to trump differences from one speaker to the next, so the odds of being able to test this scientifically are slim to none. So, I'm interested in any theoretical approaches to answering this - SHOULD one approach be better than another?
He kind of bypassed the while question of a single mic vs multiples, though, and as I'm wrapping up tracking a project and getting ready to start reamping, I've been thinking a bit about this.
I'll rerun the "stick your ear in front of it and listen at volume" test again to make sure that my preferences (or, hell, the speakers - it's a cab I've owned for 15 years now) haven't changed with time, but I've usually mic'd the lower left speaker, facing the cab. SM57 on the grill, just off the dust cap, and *something else* (usually a MD421, and that's been winning all the shootouts I've done so far) on the same speaker, a little further out, in part because it captures higher highs AND lower lows, and in part because this help deepen and thicken the SM57. Also right on the grill (I've tried more distant approaches, but for what are at the end of the day still hard rock tones whatever I may be doing with them, proximity effect and immediacy always seem to win out), then fart around with the two mics out of phase until they sound spectaclarly badly, then bring them back into phase to get. phase-coherent recording.
But, after doing some testing with a third WA87 in the mix the other day and by necessity having to put it on a differtent speaker (lack of real estate) I found myself wondering, real estate aside, are there any theoretical advantages to micing two diffrent speakers like this? Cab is four V30s, so speaker choice isn't an issue.
I know the "right" and I put that in air quotes for a reason, answer here is "use your ears," but let's be honest - close mics on a guitar cab, a couple milimeters difference in position is going to change your sound enoguh to trump differences from one speaker to the next, so the odds of being able to test this scientifically are slim to none. So, I'm interested in any theoretical approaches to answering this - SHOULD one approach be better than another?
