What guitar amp mics should i get?

[PokerDude422]

SM57 is industry standard in micing guitar amps and snares. it can do vocals as well. very good microphone.

sweet ill borrow my friends soon then and check it out, then maybe get my own

 

[Keiffer]

You should have a 57 period...

But note that not all 57's sound the same. I have several 57s that have a midrange honk and others that do not

Check out this comparison of a 57 with and w/o the transformer and against an i5

57 with - 57 w/o - i5

57 - about $90US new or less used. Used on a ton of award winning records. Also THE goto snare mic

i5 - Similar to a 57 about $100US Very good guitar mic

MD421 of MD421-II over $200US. Scooped sound. Good guitar mic and tom mic. More expensive

e609S - about $90US. Scooped with sizzly highs. Sounded good at first, but became fatiguing

My recommendation is buy a 57 and a i5

 

[punkin]

I would add that a lot of folks like the Chinese ribbons on guitar cab. YMMV.

Yup...

I use two sometimes three mics on an amp. I like the i5, E609, SM57 and the above mentioned ribbon mic.

 

[soundchaser59]

I'd rather have two ribbons than three E609's any day......

 

[PokerDude422]

You should have a 57 period...

But note that not all 57's sound the same. I have several 57s that have a midrange honk and others that do not

Check out this comparison of a 57 with and w/o the transformer and against an i5

57 with - 57 w/o - i5

57 - about $90US new or less used. Used on a ton of award winning records. Also THE goto snare mic

i5 - Similar to a 57 about $100US Very good guitar mic

MD421 of MD421-II over $200US. Scooped sound. Good guitar mic and tom mic. More expensive

e609S - about $90US. Scooped with sizzly highs. Sounded good at first, but became fatiguing

My recommendation is buy a 57 and a i5

What do you mean by scooped sound

I looked at the i5 and it seems pretty nice, i might go with that,

I talked to my friend who had a 57 and he barley ever used it and hes gonna sell it to me for like 60 bucks so ill have that now i just need to decide on my second mic, everyone has been recommending ribbons but can someone give me a link to one, and the i5 looks pretty nice i might check that one out too

 

[Big Kenny]

http://www.zzounds.com/a--2676837/item--NDYRSM2

 

[PokerDude422]

cool, would u guys recommend ribbons over the sm57 and the Audix i5? and which ribbons would u recommend

 

[PokerDude422]

what if i alternativly went with a direct box? how well do those work out?

 

[Keiffer]

What do you mean by scooped sound

A smiley face in a graphic EQ... the mids are "scooped out" or lower in gain

while ribbons "can" be nice, I'd recommend the 57 and i5 for now. learn to use these and then plan for a ribbon at a later date. later if you decide to sell, you'll always be able to get the $60 for the 57 and probably something close to what you'll pay for the i5. don't look at these purchases as for life. try them for a while and sell or trade them later when you're more informed.

 

[slidey]

what if i alternativly went with a direct box? how well do those work out?

depends a standard DI will just give your straight pickup sound to your console, fine if you use ampfarm or want to redirect through an amp at some stage...................I have this box made by palmer called "the junction" that sits between amp & speaker & allows you to take an XLR to your desk, so the sound you get is the sound of your amp before it hits the speaker

you can attenuate it so that you can crank your amp right up without blowing your rec channel to fuck & it also has a normal, mellow & bright setting

that in conjunction with a 57 or (in my case) EV PL95 (should) result in one ace guitar sound

 

[PokerDude422]

cool, i got my friends 57 today so im gonna be using that for a while and ill probly pick up the audix i5 and ill start looking into direct boxes more and on how to use them

 

[punkin]

I'd hold off on the i5 for now...now that you've got the SM57 get the feel for the sound of the of it...LOTS of great recordings are done using just that. The i5 is similar but...different. Since you'r noob to this, I would take smaller steps. The DI will be great if you've got an outboard reamp device or software package.

 

[mjau]

I'm not a big fan of the 57, though it works ok for lots of things. But for guitar cabs, I almost always like a combo of either a 609 or Beyer m69 with a condensor mic (lately it's been a Dragonfly, though anything not too fizzy will work fine). I'm surprised more people don't talk about the m69, but that's ok, keeps the ebay prices down for me I guess.
And on the cheap, try an AKG c1000 on amps...I've liked it on clean guitar amps, and it can be used on other sources also (sort of the sm57 of condensors).

 

[PokerDude422]

I have an AKG 2000b which works great, although it came with a list of functions of what it is good for and what it is not and guitars were not on that list, the same witht he C1000 was on that same list and it says not recommended for guitars

 

[slidey]

you can use any mic you want for anything you want to use it for.................I recently mic'd my snare with a neumann KMS105 condensor & it rocked I have also used an AKG solidtube for bass, bass drum, guitar cabs

generally for close micing a cab (especially for distorted tone) it's generally advisable to use a dynamic BUT at the end of it all buddy it's horses for courses, whatever works best for you

for an instant sound that's coming from your amp I'd go for a palmer junction & a 57 on your cab (to start with)

 

[PokerDude422]

does anyone have any sites that explain how direct boxes are used exactly, someone explained it sorta earlier but i didnt quite get it

 

[soundchaser59]

The basic idea behind a direct box is to convert a short 1/4 inch cable to a long XLR cable, mainly for long distance runs from a stage to a mixing board to allow a bass or an acoustic guitar to be plugged "direct in" to the mixing console without losing any signal level and without gaining any noise or interference.

They are mostly used to plug acoustic guitar pickups directly into the mixer XLR jack, to convert from 1/4 inch unbalanced to XLR balanced. Another use is to connect a bass to both the bass amp on stage and the mixing board back of house. A slightly better DI box will have a 1/4 inch input for the bass, and an XLR output for the mixing board, and a 1/4 inch "direct out" or "thru" jack to plug into the bass amp. This way the sound man gets a clean, unadulterated bass signal for the house mix, while at the same time the bass player gets a direct out signal to plug into his amp on stage. The sound man gets his own bass signal at the back of house mixer, and the bass player gets his own bass sound on stage at the same time.

Another use for a direct box is to isolate a signal from grounding and noise problems. Some DI boxes have one input jack that feeds a transformer on the inside of the box. The transformer will duplicate the input signal without actually being directly physically connected to the signal (that's just what transformers do, you'll have to study a completely different question if you dont know how transformers work) and send it out an "isolated" XLR jack. In theory, things like hum and interference and grounding loops cannot pass thru the transformer. The disadvantage of an isolation transformer is it will not pass phantom power.

 

[SMC Productions]

http://www.zzounds.com/a--2676837/item--NDYRSM2

AWESOME mic, I have two of them, and they are great. I'd like to have a whole chest full! ;-)

 

[PokerDude422]

soundchaser thanks for that explination, that helps a lot, ill start looking into different boxes and i might get one sooner or later

 

[PokerDude422]

hey i recorded another band today, and i have my friends SM57 and i tried to mic the amp, but it turned out horrible, i couldnt get a good sound out of it at all, it sounded horribly scratchy and everything, i ended up just having to record line in again