Blending two microphones together for guitar tone

[RemoWilliams]

This is probably a very noob question, but for the life of me, (and I've read as much of the "Clayman sound" thread as I could, but didn't come across it.) Whenever you guys mic a cab with two microphones, how do you guys go about blending the two separate tones together? Do you do a mix down of both of the mono signals to make them a stereo? Do you Pan lone mic 100%L and the second mic like 90%? I've just been curious as to how you guys blend the two mic method. Sorry if this has been posted before, but for the life of me I can't remember every reading it, just remember people saying they do it.

 

[Ancient_Acolyte]

Generally the two (or more) signals are combined into a single mono source

 

[RemoWilliams]

Ah, ok, I believe that makes sense. I read thru the Clayman sound thread again and I think I had skipped over some of the info (guess that happens when your trying to read so many pages), that says the same thing you said. I believe one person said that they just panned both takes of the dual mics hard left and right. Though I could be wrong.

 

[Metaltastic]

I personally prefer to keep them separate so I can continually experiment with blends; usually I'll pick the one I like better and then bring in the other until it sounds best (though it's of course difficult to immediately guage because of the whole "louder things sound better" phenomenon). Panning them opposite sides wouldn't be a good idea IMO, since it'd just sabotage the stereo spread of the separate takes!

 

[RemoWilliams]

I personally prefer to keep them separate so I can continually experiment with blends; usually I'll pick the one I like better and then bring in the other until it sounds best (though it's of course difficult to immediately guage because of the whole "louder things sound better" phenomenon). Panning them opposite sides wouldn't be a good idea IMO, since it'd just sabotage the stereo spread of the separate takes!

Good call. This whole blending thing can be confusing because of wording sometimes. So when you blend the two mics, lets say one straight on the cap and the other off the edge a bit, do you start tweaking with the one straight on the cap first and getting to to sound decent (either EQ'ing or whatnot), and THEN bring on the other mic into the same panned area? And then for the other side, do you do some different EQ'ing as well?

 

[DanLights]

How about recording the double miced signal as one mono signal into the DAW? I mean blending them outboard in the mixer/interface being used and just recording it like that as one signal? I'm guessing not a good idea cause you are limited to the "blend" you already recorded? just asking, still pretty much a n00b I am

 

[digitaldeath]

I'm with Marcus on this one, keep them seperate so you can continually experiment!

 

[Mewle]

I usually record two or maybe three mono signals each e.q.'d very slightly if needed at the desk, and then once in the DAW I route all the tracks to a mono bus which acts like a master volume for that guitar and I still have plenty of options with level, plugins and e.q. on each of the tracks. the mono bus can then be panned wherever.

For more adventurous types route to a stereo bus so you can kinda control the overall width of the final tone, and positioning of each channel within that designated pan space.(i.e. bassier tracks towards the centre).

 

[scorpio01169]

I record them as one signal. but I make sure that the signal is what i want before i print. with my hard disk recorders i have 8 v-tracks so i can do 8 different takes on mic blends. daws are the same. so i say print the two mixed and use your v-tracks for different mixes of the blend, all you'll have to do is pull the blend you like to the front when doing mixdown.

 

[mick thompson]

bus them both to a mono - that way you can make tonality edits to both wavs

 

[Metaltastic]

Good call. This whole blending thing can be confusing because of wording sometimes. So when you blend the two mics, lets say one straight on the cap and the other off the edge a bit, do you start tweaking with the one straight on the cap first and getting to to sound decent (either EQ'ing or whatnot), and THEN bring on the other mic into the same panned area? And then for the other side, do you do some different EQ'ing as well?

Well I haven't multi-mic'ed very much so I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather send them to a bus and eq that rather than trying to eq each individually to get them to "fit" together, which seems like it might end up making me go insane with all the different options I could come up with! Unless of course there's just way too much bass when combined, for example, so I'll suck some out from one of the mics, but yeah, in general I've tried to keep it to just experimenting with the blending!

 

[Metaltastic]

For more adventurous types route to a stereo bus so you can kinda control the overall width of the final tone, and positioning of each channel within that designated pan space.(i.e. bassier tracks towards the centre).

Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't this kill the stereo spread?

 

[Mewle]

wouldn't this kill the stereo spread?

not if it's done right. for instance in cubase, you can set a bus to sit between full left and 70% left, just for the example. then have your three mono tracks panned hard left for the highest, mids dead centre and low end signal hard right. they will be restrained by the width set in the bus, when it's done right it can really add some depth to the guitar and make a good guitar sound huge while still having definition throughout the frequency range. I'm not quite there personally, but there's definite potential in the method.

 

[Metaltastic]

Ah ok, so the range is designated to be between 70 and 100, and you can adjust within that - interesting!

 

[Mewle]

Ah ok, so the range is designated to be between 70 and 100, and you can adjust within that - interesting!

aye that's it. I only really just started playing with it since I found a really nice three mic setup for my evh 5150 III, still needs some tweaking on my mic positioning just to hit all three sweet spots with no phase.

 

[Metaltastic]

Oh man dude, I'd love to hear clips of that amp, it's still shrouded in mystery to me! What cab are you using it with?

 

[Mewle]

What cab are you using it with?

Just the standard fender EVH cab. It's a beast of an amp, I have a sample up on filefreaks of a rough demo I mashed together with that and AD drums

Metal Demo.mp3

I literally threw those mics at the cab, didn't spend an age lining em up or anything, and it sounds pretty big.