Guitars : how to find the SM57's sweet spot

[garry666]

Tried once, didn't make it, that article is brutal.

yeh but im also too lazy to cut through it all and tell every new person on this forum the answers to the questions asked last month so let them deal with slippermans crazy bullshit long as hell answers to yes and no questions.

 

[Metaltastic]

Ugghh, that article has and probably always will piss me off with the unnecessary wordiness and ridiculously vague descriptions (especially the frequency breakdown, good lord).

 

[garry666]

oh and skeksis no more posts you just hit 666

 

[John_C]

it's quite rare i find that i can't actually get through reading something, but that sure as hell did it. God i want to shoot myself after 15mins of that



AHHHH NOOOO I DIDN'T NOTICE AND NOW ITS TOO LATE 667 FFS!!!

 

[::XeS::]

Andy gave us the general setting he uses... single 57, 1inch away from the cloth, pointed between the edge of the dustcap and the cone. But he didn't give us the exact millimeters from the centre ecc...
You know that also 1-2mm more left or more right produce a different sound so he fine-tunes the mic position like everyone else in the world I think

 

[if6was9]

ive never been able to do this? firstly i cant trust my cans, and secondly my amps too loud :/

In that case you get some headphones you can trust and every amp has a volume control- turn the volume down really low and do the sweeping, then crank it when you've found a spot and record a test with that position. If you find a really nice spot with the amp quiet it usually stays a nice spot loud.

Tip if you've not got a re-amp box but need to find the sweet spot when you're by yourself. Record you're amps pre amp out/effects send. Loop it in your daw and send it back into the amps power amp/effects return. Now you've got a consistent sound that you can play with mic placement with for as long as you need.

There's also a technque using Pink noise. send pink noise into your amp and use this for placement. I've not done it but apparently you will know the point thats nice when you hear it. If you've not got a pink noise generator then touch the jack off your finger and use the noise that generates as the noise- Lots of pros use this for mic placement, I've heard of Devin Townshend, Bob Rock, and Micheal Wagner all using this technique.

 

[MetalJonesy]

i tend to just get the amp sounding nice, mic it up, go into the control room and listen there, as i know my monitors and would trust them anyday over cans!

 

[brandy]

For the by yourself thing, record a DI and loop it in your DAW and send it out to your amp via reamp box... Sooo handy, no worrying about fiddling with the guitar or having someone else play.

I'm more like abyssofdreams in that I don't really touch the amp controls after finding a tone I like in the room, I just play with mic position until what I'm hearing in the headphones has the same characters as what I like about the room sound.

Yea - very similar here!

But I never use and used cans - I can only judge what I hear in the control-room, because I never use cans, exept for some critical editing and stuff, but not for judging sound.

So I usually run a zillion times between rec-room and control-room ;-)

Depending on time/budget I am able to get it right without any tweaking, when I use my own Marshal-Cab with a "it-works-great" standard mic-setup. This is what I do sometimes if I rec a demo and if there is no time.

But I able to mess around with mics and stuff for hours if there is any need.

After I feel that I can't go better with the mics I usually fine-tune the amp-settings as well.

Brandy

 

[Caustica]

My favorite setup for doing electric guitars is an XY pair of a 57 and a KM184 aiming the middle of the pair right for the centre of the speaker about 1-5" away depending on what I want to get out of it. I find this works great because each of the mic's is 45 degrees off axis so it starts attenuating the top end. The trick is then when you're mixing you can boost the air without boosting the actual guitar tops which'll make it sound brittle or harsh. Now i'm going to assume the same principles could work with just the 57, but i've never done it.

Someone earlier mentioned that you don't listen to a guitar amp that close, so if you can spare something put up a room mic somewhere further away from amp and you can get a more dimensional sound when you mix it in. Don't bother if the room has an ugly character though.

Overall, you just have to keep checking until you get the sound you want.