Microphone or line-out?

[Hog]

Is there a reason why a lot of bands mike the amp as opposed to using the line-out thingy? i.e. difference in sound quality. With 2 guitarists now in Element we have a Randall and a Mesa Boogie and want to get the best guitar possible. We have Shure SM57 for miking (indirectly) into a soundcard, we have a mixer to tweak stuff too. Any hints are greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Hoglogbogsnog:up:

[spellchecker]

some say using line-out's doesn't give you much ambience, and can make things sound a bit too clinical. often as well, the quality of the line out feed is shite. i had a marshall valvestate once that had a line out so shit that it was better suited as a pen holder.

on the other hand, if the line out is good quality, it can be useful for recording. as a general rule try to use as level an e.q. as possible on the amp, don't overdo the gain and turn off any delay, reverb, effects, etc. on the amp. it's better to do this on the computer often, especially in the case of e.q. and reverb. what sounds nice played in a room with a bit of a reverb can often sound a little vacuous once recorded to disk.

try mucking about with your sm57. start by hitting record on your computer, and get one person to play the guitar while another person systematically tries different mic positions, recording the positions as accurately as possible as they go. experiment with different mic positions, different distances from the speaker and if you have more than one mic, try different things like micing the back of the speaker (if it's open/accessible). it all adds to the sound.

[soundian]

Is there a reason why a lot of bands mike the amp as opposed to using the line-out thingy? i.e. difference in sound quality. With 2 guitarists now in Element we have a Randall and a Mesa Boogie and want to get the best guitar possible. We have Shure SM57 for miking (indirectly) into a soundcard' date=' we have a mixer to tweak stuff too. Any hints are greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Hoglogbogsnog:up:[/quote']

The cab and speakers are an important part of a guitars sound, just try plugging your guitar straight into a mixer and you'll see what I mean.

Experiment and see what works best, try using both mic and line as well.

[threeornothing]

You could experiment with both, recording the line level and mic into their own channels, then blending the two until you get a sound you are happy with. The advantages and disadvantages of close micing amps and DIing essentially contradict each other, what you may be lacking with the DI is what you get with the micing, what you would lack with micing is what you would get with DI. Your ears will know whats best.

Personally, I never DI (except for bass) and use two mics on my amp instead, one large diaphragm condensor mic on axis with the speaker, which gets all the top end and clarity, but doesn't really get any of the dirt and bass, and a SM57 off axis which gets all the dirt and bass, but none of the clarity and top end Again, its a case of blending the two until you get what sounds right, but you have to take their phase relation into account, I don't have a phase invert on my desk and I'm always summing these two channels to one track so it's crucial to get it sounding right before recording it. Bit of experimenting is needed...the cab needs to be another room with as best isolation as you can get. I can't hear mine in my bedroom from my living room (probably cos its at 0.5!) so you know that what you are hearing through your monitoring is accurate this way. I like a slightly out of phase sound because it can do a bit of frequency scooping or boosting without needing to go near the EQ (and as my desk is Behringer, I go NOWHERE near it's EQ ) It's all just in experimenting and all that jazz....my neighbours love me

But yeah...just experiment recording both at once (set one channel of your sequencer to record from left, and the other from the right, and pan accordingly) The sound of the DI might be so shitty that it could work really well as an effect (eg. a breakdown where a chugging guitar is on one note or something with the DI sound, then a reversed cymbal with guitar feedback slamming into a full on sound....shit like that!) Your CPU's the limit

[Guest lime ruined my life]

by using line out you bypass the speaker cabinet completely. speakers colour the sound of the amp, if you want that sound then mic the speakers. By line out of the amp you can go straight into the pc and have it dry or feed it into a speaker simulator. It changes the tone of the sound.

i say, do both, and mix it so it sounds good. Try a variety of micing positions too.

[Chi 666]

hog you cant beet a good 57. you lose good ambiance when using a line out. diffrent mic placment can be vital to a good sound.

[Guest Savant]

Also (I dont think this has been mentioned but I didn't read everyone's posts) it's hard for speakers to reproduce high frequencies (or something) so a guitars signal carries the high frequencies at a higher volume, so if you use the raw signal then you'll get a very harsh sound...

[threeornothing]

hog you cant beet a good 57. you lose good ambiance when using a line out. diffrent mic placment can be vital to a good sound.

Most mic's probably beat the 57...especially if it has a shit mic pre amp.

Read into the 47, 87, 421, 121 (royer) etc etc....although of course there is no one mic fits all, all amps have different characteristics, as the mics do, and ultimately the players and the tonal preference does....you need to go with what fits.

But if a 57 is all thats at hand it will do I suppose

[Hog]

Bugger, lol. I bought a 57 because it seemed like a decent mike. I want a Neumann because they look cool and are too expensive.

[Guest MKII]

Bugger' date=' lol. I bought a 57 because it seemed like a decent mike. I want a Neumann because they look cool and are too expensive.[/quote']

All my sundaramusic stuff's been recorded with a 57.

I like it for recording saxophone and electric guitar, but not so keen on it for vocals and flute.

[Hog]

All my sundaramusic stuff's been recorded with a 57.

I like it for recording saxophone and electric guitar' date=' but not so keen on it for vocals and flute.[/quote']

Anyone want to buy a Shure 57?

hehe, kidding:up:

[Guest MKII]

Wait a minute, the stuff on my site was recorded with a mic borrowed from Alan Cynic.

[The Byre]

The SM57 and its brother the SM58 are the most popular mics on Planet Earth. The 57 is great for guitar cabs, a Neumann would not be great - anything but, in fact. The 57 is not so good for drums (Sennheiser 421s or Audix D series are better) but it still is a great all-round mic at a low price.

The 58 is the best low-priced vocal mic out there, far better than the Beta and (IMO) second only to the Neumann KMS series for stage vocals.

But back to the subject, try line out AND mic'ing it up (as mentioned above) and placing one signal all the way to the left and the other all the way to the right for a really BIG guitar sound.

Eh, experiment!

[Flash@TMB]

The 57 has good feedback rejection, and being directional it doesn't pick up a lot of bleed from other sources. This makes is a good live mic. But for recording none of this matters as the cabinet will be blasting out it's sound in isolation... in which case you can use pretty much any mic, and the most important thing becomes fidelity.

But back to the original question. If using a pod / distortion pedal or a transistor amp then it really wouldn't matter too much if you DI'd it, the sound of fake distortion will overwhelm any subtle nuances impated by the speaker. If the pod / pedal / transistor amp contains a valve preamp section then the chances are that the DI will sound better!

If using a full on valve amp with valve pre and power stages, then there is a big advantage to sticking a mic on the cabinet. A nice amp will will produce beautiful and complex distortion with proper secondary harmonics, they really excites the air, and makes every note/chord feel as through it's passing through your body. You can only capture this by inserting a microphone into the path of the sound, and your SM57 will produce a decent result.

Here's a neat trick that you may want to try. Insert a DI box post any FX but just before the lead enters the amp, so that the DI is being fed the plain guitar sound including any pedal FX (but not distotion). Then record both this and a feed from the SM57 on the cab. Don't worry too much about your sound or mic placement at this stage. Just concentrate on your playing.

Afterwards goto the editing software and view the 2 tracks side by side to see where you hit the footswitch to change amp channel. You can then chop the DI track into clean and distorted sections, and bounce these down into new tracks. At this point the original mic'd track can be disgarded.

When it comes time to mix, you can use the raw guitar feeds to experiment with different:

amps

amp settings

speaker cabs

microphones

microphone placement

And of course you can blend some of these results together. Just replay these raw feeds through the guitar input over and over again until your hearts content. If you want to be really clever than you could even try recording it pre FX and manually operate the FX during playback.

An important function of EQing is to place the instruments into their own space in the mix. This technique of re-amping, which is natural and intuitive (to the musician), can take a lot of the pain out of that process; of course some EQ will still be requried, but only to apply the finishing touches. But re-amping can really help to blend your perfect guitar sound into the mix. And it will sound very natural and unprocessed, making it easy on the ears.

The same technique can also be used to record bass guitar.

With sound, three very important things are:

the source chain

signal to noise ratio

fidelity

The further back in the source chain something sits, the greater the impact it will have on the sound. So for instance if the source chain is:

Musician -> instrument (including string pickups etc) -> FX, preamp stage -> power amp stage -> speaker cabinet -> microphone -> microphone placement

Then later on you have umpteen scenarios around the recording setup which are too numerous to mention but culminate in the finished CD. This then passes onto the listeners HiFi setup, around which we can again build umpteen scenarios before it passes through the listeners speakers, bounces round their room a bit, enters their ears, and finally terminates somewhere in their brain!

Now here's the rub... any problems introduces early in the chain, say for instance with the musician, the instrument, or the amp will be propogated and processed through the entire chain. And it doesn't matter how good the listers HiFi or speakers are... they aren't going to be able to fix that! My point being to sort the sound close to the source, which is another good argument for the benefits of re-amping.

Signal to noise ratio is how much of your recording is what's meant to be there verses crap that has been introduced by each stage the sound has passed through. Although sometimes certain units can be specifically used to colour sound, generally you aim for as little noise and as much signal as possible. The more you fuck about with the recording the more clarity you will use. Using good equipment with good S:N ratio helps, but if your equipment isn't in the megabucks league then there is a strong argument for reducing how much equipment the signal passes through! So again this makes a good case for reamping, because (hopefully) it takes you closer to the finished sound with less processing.

Fidelity is how faithful the finished article is to the source. I reckon this is self explanitory. Get the source sounding right, so you don't have to screw around with it too much and you will achieve a greater fidelity.

[HateEvent]

Well Hogster, I wanna use my Mesa for the recordings if possible

In my experience, mic'ing the amp has given me far better results.

I've been using my Sennheiser E835 mic on the Mesa and recording it onto my Tascam 788. Man, it sounds really good. I finally feel like I actually know what I'm doing!

I could record it and somehow let you hear the recordings (I have no way (yet) of getting them from the Tascam to my computer though ) and you can see if you feel that they are good enough

Note:- They are

[Hog]

Well Hogster' date=' I wanna use my Mesa for the recordings if possible

In my experience, mic'ing the amp has given me far better results.

I've been using my Sennheiser E835 mic on the Mesa and recording it onto my Tascam 788. Man, it sounds [i']really good. I finally feel like I actually know what I'm doing!

I could record it and somehow let you hear the recordings (I have no way (yet) of getting them from the Tascam to my computer though ) and you can see if you feel that they are good enough

Note:- They are

Good stuff man. Even if you could take it on cd to practice?

[threeornothing]

Heres the diagram you need....cost you a good few grand replace the 67 with a Rode NT1A and the 121 with a 57 and thats my setup...

[HateEvent]

Good stuff man. Even if you could take it on cd to practice?

That's the big problem I think, I don't have an external CD burner to hook up to the Tascam so I'm not 100% on how to put the recordings onto CD

The recordings would be just the Mesa (no bass, drums, vocals), unless you wanted me to hook my MP3 up and basically record the Mesa over your old recordings (Nessuno, Neon etc.)?

I'm sure I'll get sorted soon so that you can hear the stuff. Cos the only way you could at the moment is if I took the multitrack to Toms...

[Danny Doubt]

hmm i would take the L + R out of the tascam using phonocables > mini jack and record them onto computer using ur line in and some software, then burn em off, hey presto!

needed equipment : computer, cables, software

For recording i would use an SM57 also cuz they just sound gr8 for what they are and price wise. Get ur hands on an NT2 for vocals i love em!

SM58's are good for live vocals because it sounds great and its a proven classic mic and its got a really flat polar response but give a Sennheiser 935 a bash you would be surprised how good they are and their not a whole lot more than the SM58 in price!

[Hog]

Cheers for all the info guys. I think for vocals Im after a sharp/sparkly/trebely responsive microphone for raaaaaaaaar

[Danny Doubt]

Hmm...Rode NT2 is pretty sharp and clear u could always use the SM57 for vocals theres no rules saying u cant and sometimes u get surprising results or you could jus record using a normal SM58 or a Sen E935 its entirely up to you but try and use a pop shield for ur pffs and sss's etc

hope this helps,

Danny.