#1934343 - 04/29/08 03:15 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Trucks]
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fantasticsound
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Be careful to split the difference, Trucks. Normalizing a weak signal from your preamp will amplify the noise floor of the recording whereas even a cheap preamp run at a modest level will provide program that is much louder than any noise and require far less nomalization to reach optimum signal strength. Recording weak can be as bad as recording overly hot. 
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#1934349 - 04/29/08 03:39 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: fantasticsound]
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Trucks
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Yeah yeah I dig. Been down that road! Thanks for the tip, Neil. 
I started recording at lower levels to start with, because of that teeny clip rearing it's ugly head in a moment of rambunctious chordage. :-)
I have found that finding the split is not easy, when taking playing dynamics into consideration. What I really need is a recording engineer lol
At the moment, I try and stick as close to the Jimmy Page principle of "EQ it right in the first place, so you don't have to mess with it in the studio too much" as possible, because primarily I wanna play guitar, not mix tracks... But that is a drag, I really enjoy messing with the studio engineering side of it.. It just takes up too much time.
What that HAS taught me though, is a completely different way of EQ'ing my amp so it sits a little better in the spectrum. I have found my ear now prefers more mids, less bass and a tiny bit more treble than I would have used previously. So it has helped my guitar playing a little... I guess... 
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"do I see a vacuum there, or am I b-goin' blind.."
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#1934518 - 04/30/08 02:53 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Trucks]
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Bill@Welcome Home Studios
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Eddie Kramer, whom I admire, also works that way. He tries to get everything down in tracking, so that on mixdown he just sets all the console faders at 0 and he has a mix.
But to take this approach, you have to know what you want to hear, and what you are doing, and I find that most modern recordists have no fucking idea, they just WANT TO RECORD!!!!!!!. (sigh...)
I go to a friends studio, and they track each of the guitars onto four or five tracks, because they've split the signal through a bunch of different amps, and one of those Vox floor pedal thingys, becaue they have no idea what they want to hear in the final mix. I know that Eddie knows EXACTLY what he wants to hear, I know that I try to do the pre production so that -I- know exactly what we are going for, and it drives me nuts that people are afraid to commit to a mix. You use the guitar and amp combo that you want to get the sound that you like. You pick a mic and mic pre, slap them in front of the amp, and push the red button. If you don't like the sound, move the mic, or change the mic, or slap the guitar player until you -do- like the sound.
Sometimes I loose my patience because this all seems so obvious to me, and because so many people spend so much time trying to make something that used to be relatively simple into some kind of complex mystical bullshit. Then I remember that I had an advantage... when I started out, the cheap mics were obviosusly shit, even to me. There WERE no preamps, just expensive consoles. AAnd if I had more than a couple of tracks to work with, I was lucky. Oh, and I had grown up listening to real instruments being played by real musicians, so I knew what real instruments sounded like...not some MP3 copy of some overhyped and supercompressed recording of a digital sample of an instrument.
If you want to lesrn to record good sounding electric guitars, start off with good sounding electric guitars. Put a $70 Shure SM-57 in front of the guitar cabinet, and move it around until it sounds good. Period. Same can be said for acoustic, with some small variation.... use 2 mics, use small diaphragm condensers, put one in front of the bosy, around the lower bout somewhere, about 18 inches in front of the guitar(not in line with the soundhole). Put the second mic up around the 12th fret at the same level as the neck, aimed at an angle down the neck towards the body. Again, move things around until it sounds good.
Limit your choices until you get a handle on things like instrument/amp placement in the room, and mic placement around the instrument/amp. Unlimited choices are not your friend. In the area of accurate recording, less is more... less crap in the signal path, fewer effects, fewer options, etc etc.
Yes indeed, there are many other ways to do the job, but it is not random, it is not rote, you have to pay attention.... the more capable you are of listening and discerning the differences, the better recordist you will be. The better you get, the more you will appreicate an upgrade such as Trucks or Doc suggests to a class mic, or my constant advice about better monitoring systems.
Bill
_________________________
"...it's easier than hitting the kids, and almost as much fun..."
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#1934536 - 04/30/08 03:47 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Trucks]
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Bill@Welcome Home Studios
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I love the Beyer M-88. I used to own a bunch of them, used them as my primary vocal mic for many years live. We used M-69s like other people use 57s... as an all-purpose mic. You might look at the 201 or 422 as well. Likely in your part of the world, they are as ubiquitous as various EVs are here.
And I am not downing anybodys choice of any particular mic. What I am trying to do is make the points that you gotta know what you are doing before thowing money at a fix for something that is not broken. You could give me the best mechanics tools available, and I still could not fix your car. I'm not a mechanic. And if the international standard doesn't work for you, you perhaps need to consider why it doesn't work before you discard it for something else. In out particular case here, I believe that the poster needs to get a handle on what he is doing before he tries to buy his way out of a problem that does not exist. And he seems to get that. So mission accomplished, I guess.
It concerns me that younger recordists did not grow up listening to real instruments. How are they supposed to know what a cello sounds like? How will they know when they have captured it or not?
And it concerns me that people look at the gear in various studios and, taking what they see out of context, try to apply those solutions to their own home setups. First, you need to know what you are doing, and why you need a particular tool, before you go out and buy that tool. (The positive side of this is that the user gets to experience some good gear in and among the shit he bought on sale at the local guitar store, and if he accidentally gets to place it properly and set it up properly, he may get value from the purchase.)
And it concerns me that, because a studio uses a preamp (albeit a $3k preamp) suddenly everybody needs a preamp (albeit, they only want to spend $100 for it)... etc etc (pick a piece of gear.. thereis a chonese knockoff available that is the choice of gear du jure). Not many of you guys would put up with Gorilla amps or no-name cheap pacific rim guitars, but many will buy totally awful sounding recording gear, just because it is on closeout cheap at the local guitar store.
Bill
Edited by Bill@Welcome Home Studios (04/30/08 03:48 AM)
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#1934568 - 04/30/08 05:53 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: Bill@Welcome Home Studios]
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miroslav
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... it drives me nuts that people are afraid to commit to a mix.
Yeah...very true these days for most new recordists.
Let's track the lead guitar with 15 mics and do 30 takes...and then we'll sus it out later....
Another valid option/path one can take is to track with some commitment and simplicity, and then, if when you get to the mix you find that it's "drifted" a bit from what you were hearing in your head during pre-production...just take what you have and make it work. Let the song take the path it wants.
Of course...if you have 80 tracks of guitars to sift through...you may never be able to commit or find a solid path. You will be in re-mix hell….
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miroslav - miroslavmusic.com"Just because it happened to you, it doesn't mean it's important."
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#1934648 - 04/30/08 07:42 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: miroslav]
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MILLO
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Wow I just checked the Beyers and they are far more affordable than Royers. Cool.
Very cool discussion here.
I've left "for later" my electric guitar recording experimentation and it has never happened. I think I'm getting inspired to schedule in a few hours of experimentation next week. Let's hope the neighbors don't call the cops (just kidding). I have 3 mics at the moment, SM 57, Rode NT1A condenser and another dynamic, an Audix i5. I'll start working w/ the 57.
Edited by MILLO (04/30/08 07:49 AM)
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#1934672 - 04/30/08 08:20 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: MILLO]
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miroslav
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The approach I use most often...and I think it's probably the more common approach for many folks (?)....is to always lay down the backing tracks first.
Yeah...I may have the lead already in my head...or maybe I'm just dyin' to track the vocals 'cuz I have all the lyrics written and I'm in the mood....
...but no...I will first track the drums against a couple of scratch tracks.
Then I'll lay down one rhythm guitar (it too might end up being a scratch track…or keeper).
Then the bass guitar.
Then any other rhythm guitars (acoustic or electric)…or rhythm instruments.
Then the piano/keys…if they are more rhythmic in nature...but if they are lead lines or just "sweetening"...I will save them for latter.
After the rhythm tracks are all down...I will add the pads/organs...the full-chord stuff that doesn't directly alter or interfere with the rhythms.
Finally after all that is down...I turn my attention to vocals.
And then after them come the lead guitars/instruments and any sweetening.
So I basically build the mix AS I track...and each subsequent instrument/track has the right foundation to build on. If I was working with a full band…I would still lay down all the rhythm tracks first…though maybe all played at the same time.
If I laid down just the drums and then went straight for lead guitars...it just wouldn’t work well, IMO...and it makes it that much hared to get the right sounds when setting up for tracking since you have no foundation to reference against.
Anyway...that's what works for me, time and time again.
When it comes to editing…I follow pretty much the same order as I did when tracking….that way I am still building the mix in the same manner as I make my edits.
I'm sure someone here will say they've always started with the vocals or something else and it was always good and worked out for them... which is fine for them, I guess. *shrug* 
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miroslav - miroslavmusic.com"Just because it happened to you, it doesn't mean it's important."
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#1934718 - 04/30/08 09:44 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: miroslav]
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MILLO
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I've found some players like to have their sound ROUND AND SWEET and in order to get it that way they EQ their amps too dark even when they go onstage... where their tone will sound too dark or muddy when put in the context of the band. I assume this happens a lot while recording, huh?
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"Without music, life would be a mistake." --from 'Beyond Good and Evil', by Friedrich Nietzsche My MySpace Space
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#1934760 - 04/30/08 10:22 AM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: MILLO]
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miroslav
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I tend to go for darker tones...and yeah, when you set the guitar for the e-x-a-c-t tone you want by itself...it may sound super...
...then you pull it up in the mix and it just doesn't work.
But I've done various types of setups enough times so that when it comes time to mix...I can usually pre-adjust the EQ's as I already know how those individual tracks will behave in the mix.
Sometimes...it's an odd setting that works....
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miroslav - miroslavmusic.com"Just because it happened to you, it doesn't mean it's important."
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#1934883 - 04/30/08 12:45 PM
Re: Mic to amp help.....
[Re: miroslav]
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Mudcat
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I'm going to throw out a mic arrangement that got me the best representation of what I heard coming out of my amp on tape playback.
We placed my amp (Lab Series L5) in the middle of the studio (a relatively dead room) and set a Sennheiser 421 approximately the length of my guitar away from the amp pointed directly between the two speakers. What we heard in the control room sounded like what was coming out of the amp.
Most of the tracks we cut were relatively clean, although I also recorded my Filtertron equipped Anniversary Model with this arrangement and got a nice edgey lead tone as well. We did minimal EQ at the desk when mixing (cutting some low-end IIRC). I don't know how this mic configuration would stack up if you were going for a crunchy tone but I would think it would also give reasonably good results.
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