Guitar Miking: Getting a Great Guitar Sound by Barry Rudolph at musician.com.
CAD Equitek E-100 response: http://www.pulseonline.com/CAD/E100response.jpg
http://www.bluemic.com/images_reviews/rec2000.htm
SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST
Finally, Brad fired up his amp and picked on a Telecaster. We placed the Dragonfly and various other mics about an inch in front of the grille cloth, facing the cone of the speaker about 2/3 of the way to the edge. We listened to the recordings, and our jaws dropped in unison. With the other mics we were hearing recordings of varying quality; with the Dragonfly it was different. We were no longer listening to a recording of a Fender amp � we were listening to a Fender amp.
That was astonishing. There in the control room, coming out of the monitor speakers, was the undiluted sound of a very good amplifier � period. The illusion was perfect; if you closed your eyes you'd swear that the grey grille of a Fender Deluxe Reverb was sitting in front of you, not the small box of a monitor speaker. I've never heard an electric guitar sound captured so perfectly. Sorry, none of the other mics we tried rated.
Speaking of being fooled, at one point the signal from the Dragonfly caught my back brain unawares; I had my mouth open and was replying to a question recorded on the disk before the cortex kicked in and reminded me that this was not live. That very seldom happens. It's awfully hard to fool the back brain, and the Dragonfly is one of the few microphones I've tried that managed. (Neumann KN84s have done it, as have some Sony lavaliere mics.) What's most astonishing is that the voice I replied to was my own. There was one small bug, though. First of a kind prototypes invite gremlins, and this test was no exception. The Curse of Oleatha Avenue bit the green microphone; when we tried to use it for some preamp comparisons, we discovered it was picking up a local FM station quite audibly. (The black microphone was dead silent, hooked up to the same preamp with the same cable.) We opened the mic up and couldn't find much wrong; my guess is that the prototype's lacquered coating on the gold colored capsule housing was interfering with proper grounding, and the wires weren't being properly shielded. BLUE assured me that the problem won't be there on the production models.
>my favorite mic for guitar cabs is the now discontinued Sennheiser MD409. The mic that replaced it seems similar - the e609, and is avalable for around $230. ... Other mics I use on guitar cabs include the Beyer tgx50 (also available as the Opus69), and the venerable M88 or the M69, which has a bit more bass rolloff, but for significantly less$ The extra rolloff should actually be good for extremely close miking. A mic I don't own, but various comments on this NG suggest the m201 should work well. Some of the Beyers should be available within your $200 budget. Various E-V's could work out, several folks have suggested the RE15 or 16, you'd need to find one used to fit the price range. The RE's have a design which minimizes proximity effect, you won't get as much bass boost when close miking with these. I'm sure some of N/D series would be just fine, but E-V changes the models every year or so, so I can't keep track of them.
Guitarage: Recording - Info about digital recording and recording techniques
>I'd take an RE15 or 16 over an SM57 any day for guitar cabs...
http://home.student.utwente.nl/e.m.szwajcer/crm/music/recguit.html
Recording Electric Guitar Guide
Date: March 10 1999
Last update: April 25 1999
Author: Andr� Oosterkamp
�1999 Andr� Oosterkamp
"The most common way is putting the microphone in front of the amp and that's it. A microphone in front of a loud amp must be able to stand high pressure levels. For this use many microphones might prove useful. Many time the Shure SM57 is used and with good results [i disagree; the sm57 is a snare mic and has a rasp - mh]. A very popular new microphone is the Neumann TLM103. Although this is a condenser microphone it can be used because it can take up high pressure levels. You can of course use others too. Just to name a few that show up on news groups: Royer 121, RCA BK-5, Coles 4038, Beyer M160, 260 M500, MD421, Rode NT 1, 2, EV RE20, EV 635, CAD E100, AT 4050 etc.. As you can see many different microphones are used by different people. ... The main thing to keep in mind when recording is that the sound with a microphone sounds different then when you hear the amp. Monitor through the microphone because that's how it gets recorded.. The thing to try and learn and mastering this is putting up a headphone and move the microphone around. You can also sit in the control room and have someone do it for you..."
How to Plug a Guitar into a Computer
Goldwave Sampling Course for guitar recording - by Johan Lindgren
recording bass guitar - sospubs
posted: Ideas for amp tone samples online? What would the ideal amp tone samples be? I have made several mixes of amp tone samples from albums over the years. Best would be guitar in isolation, no other instruments - to hear the Tone most clearly. I'm surprised by how rough today's amp tone samples on the web are. I have a lot of experience with hi-fi MP3 and MiniDisc compression, but I still am having a lot of difficulty making MP3s of amp tone recordings without introducing lots of glitchy artifacts.
Miking is a skill in itself, and requires some gear. A great start is these books, which I am studying:
Getting Great Guitar Sounds
Recording the Guitar
The Recording Guitarist
A key component of Barre's home-brewed guitar magic is careful--and inventive--placement of microphones. "I utilize both close and distant miking," says Barre. "Usually I close-mike with Shure SM57s or 58s because they suit the guitar frequencies so well. I start with one mic positioned halfway between the center of the cone and the edge of the speaker and have the engineer move the mic around while I'm playing until I hear the right sound. I usually position a second close mic about six feet away, pointing in whatever direction sounds best. Finally, I'll place a mic at the back of the studio facing against the wall or a glass surface. The far mic gives a close reflection and some natural reverb which can later be added to the mix in varying degrees. If you're recording guitars in a big room, why not use the room for a natural reverb?"
"The Outer Circle," one of The Meeting's superb offerings, displays the kind of memorable guitar heroics fans have come to expect from Barre and offers a prime example of his knack for blending several guitar sounds without losing each instrument's unique tonal qualities. "For the gritty, tough-sounding guitar parts, I used an Anderson guitar with humbucker pickups played through a Soldano 50-watt head and a Marshall 2 5 12 cabinet," says Barre. "I also used a walnut Schecter guitar plugged into an early '70s Marshall 50-watt head and the same Marshall 2 5 12 cabinet. For that rig, I placed a Neumann U 87 microphone eight inches from the speaker and mixed it with some room ambience from a Tandy PZM microphone."
xxx - If you are using a tube power amp with an artificial load instead of a speaker, such as a dummy load, resistive load, power soak or power attenuator, you can connect the G-Force after this device and the power amp and that way get the benefit of power tube distortion at line level. This will also be a good idea if your amp lacks an effect loop. From the load, feed the signal into another power amp and guitar speakers:
guitar>preamp & tube power amp>artificial load>g-force>second power amp>guitar speaker
In a home studio I suggest using the scenario described above, using a power attenuator and a speaker filter. If you are using the DRV or REV in the G-Force you should use the G-Force speaker filter, or some other speaker filter located after the G-Force in the chain; otherwise too much high frequencies from the DRV & REV will be recorded:
guitar>tube pre- & power amp>artificial load>g-force with speaker filter on>recorder>fullrange speakers or headphones
xxx - Another recording method is to place a microphone next to a tube amp�s speaker, feed this signal into a mixer, and use the G-Force in the mixer�s effect loop. In that case you should enable the Killdry feature in the G-Force (see this page), so that you don�t get any dry sound in the effect loop interfering with the recorded tracks, and if you are using it�s REV, you should also enable the G-Force�s speaker filter (in this situation you may want to add the reverb during mixdown, after the track has been recorded):
guitar>tube amp>guitar speaker>microphone>recording mixer>g-force in effect loop>fullrange speakers or headphones
xxx - If you use other digital equipment, for example digital recorders, you may want to use the digital In/Out jacks on the G-Force to connect these to each other. That way the signal doesn�t have to be converted into analog at the G-Force output and then back into digital in the other unit(s) again, with some slight sound deterioration. If your other equipment uses other digital standards than the G-Force�s S/PDIF with RCA connectors, like S/PDIF with Optical connectors or AES/EBU, there are adapters commercially available.
The G-Force uses 44.1 kHz sample rate and 24 bit resolution (for comparison, a CD record uses 44.1 kHz, 16 bit resolution). The sample rate determine how high frequencies the A/D converters can handle, and should not be directly mixed with other sample rate values, like 48 kHz or 96 kHz. The bit resolution determines how subtle dynamics that can be reproduced by the unit. When connecting units with different bit resolutions, slight "truncation" distortion can occur. This can be masked with a process called "dithering", which is featured in some processors.
Again, there are adapters available, although in these cases it might be cheaper, easier and just as good sounding to go through the analog outputs.
Jack Joseph Puig: article "Guitar Recording Techniques" in the April 1998 issue of EQ magazine.
Sound on Sound - recording guitars (archive this)
homerecording.com/4trackfaq.html
I bought Cubasis ($90) mixing/sequencing software.
color i4track (what's a "cassette tape"?)
Amptone.com ultra gear-search page