IN YOUR FACE MASSIVE GUITAR TONE: Cab mic'ing tip!

[Clark Kent]

Okay so this trick might not be new to all you guys but I suggest everyone who hasn't tried this to give it a shot! I heard this tip in on Pensado's Place from a highly successful engineer so it's good stuff I promise you!

For this technique you need two mics. It doesn't really matter which two... just use the two you like the most. In my case it would be an SM57 and a Royer R-121. The plan is to find sweetspots for these mics where they work amazingly well together. Now how do I do that?

I'll go through this from the very beginning so it might be boring to people who already know most of this.

1) turn you amp gain to full so your cabinet is making a lot of noise
2) now take the mic you like the most (in my case SM57)
3) use closed headphones to find a sweetspot (I always close mic)

---> sweep the mic through the edge and center of the best sounding speaker in your cabinet. You'll notice it gives you two kind of fizzy sounds, one on the edge and one on the center. This sweetspot for me would be when I have the same amount of both fizzy sounds. The fizzy sounds kind of eliminate each other.

HERE'S THE MAGIC PART:

4) take your second mic (R121 in my case) but DON'T SOLO THE TRACK, instead leave both mics on so you hear them both in your headphones. FLIP THE PHASE ON ONE OF THE MICS. Now what you need to do is find a new sweetspot with the second mic but how? Phase flipping will eliminate all the same frequencies. So if you had another SM57 and it was placed at the exact same spot as the first mic you would hear no sound at all. What I want you to do is try to find a spot with this other mic where you hear the least amount of noise. This should not be judged by what sounds best. It should be judged by LEAST AMOUNT OF SOUND PERIOD. What this does is it will give you a spot where the mics are perfectly in phase. Also... what it means is that both mics will have somewhat same frequencies so they aren't giving much of a mic character thing but just complimenting each other and giving a more realistic tone of a cabinet.

5) TURN OFF THE PHASE FLIP. Now you should have an awesome sound. Personally I'd leave them at the same volume but you can experiment all you want.

If you have an open back cabinet I suggest you put the second mic to the rear side of the cabinet/combo and do the same thing. That works great too.

GOOD LUCK AND I HOPE THIS TIP WILL COME IN HANDY!!

 

[ForHerDeadEyes]

I knew about this and have used the technique..
But..
I asked Jens Bogren about it, when I had him as a teacher, and he said:
"-Why would you want to do that? What you end up with is the same sound, just louder. The point of using more than one mic is to find something that compliments the other."

And that makes some sense..

 

[Clark Kent]

If you were using same mics like f.ex. two SM57s. Then it wouldn't make any sense. That would lead to just getting a louder tone... although no SM57 I've ever used has sounded exactly the same. Using different mics will give you a different sound especially if you are using different type of mics. F.ex. a dynamic mic with a ribbon mic or a condenser or what ever.

The fact is that you can't end up with just louder volume with different mics since different mics have different characters. A bit like two different compressors combined parallel... not the same thing but a similar thing.

Anyways this might not be something people will like but I think it gives me BEEF and that's something that can't be EQ'd in afterwards.

 

[Uros]

What also you could do is to sweep around the 2nd mic so that their sum sounds as fizzy as possible, and then just flip the phase switch on one of the mics. That is, if you are after smoother tones. No mic sounds the same, that's for sure.

 

[Clark Kent]

I did a quick test with Amplitube 3 Soldano SLO-100 and Redwirez Mesa IRs. Surprisingly although I used different mics the end resulting tone is quite similar... so I guess this kind of shows what I was trying to say that this kind of eliminates the mic characters and gives you the beefy cab sound.

This first clip is an SM57 and a 421:
http://www.mediafire.com/?rpya4134v90xb2m

This one a Lawson L47 and a 421 off-axis:
http://www.mediafire.com/?iff4ash2ucbj0qo

The second test had more mic character in it but still a beefy sound.

 

[Charles J]

dude, this is how I mic my GTR tones for EVERY record I've ever made.... Trident S20, play a section of the song with the most dynamic, loop it, go out to the live room with a pair of phones and put your first mic in a position that sounds really good, THEN take your second mic (in my case either a 57X2 OR 57 + 421, maybe a third i5 thrown inn) and move it around until like he said, the noise or tone gets the QUIETEST or it's giving you those really nasty 12k and above frequencies, you know you're basically cancelling out, in my case, all the high-end and bullshit but ALSO a hint of all the real deep, sub-low bullshit.

i Find it also works best when using the same PAIR of mic pres... putting each mic to a diffferent pre alays gives me strange results.

S20 is great for this and affordable! It sounds fucking HUGE on gtrs!

 

[AD Chaos]

Great post! Sure it's been talked about before, but not explained like you have done. At least not that I remember.

 

[vespiz]

dude, this is how I mic my GTR tones for EVERY record I've ever made.... Trident S20, play a section of the song with the most dynamic, loop it, go out to the live room with a pair of phones and put your first mic in a position that sounds really good, THEN take your second mic (in my case either a 57X2 OR 57 + 421, maybe a third i5 thrown inn) and move it around until like he said, the noise or tone gets the QUIETEST or it's giving you those really nasty 12k and above frequencies, you know you're basically cancelling out, in my case, all the high-end and bullshit but ALSO a hint of all the real deep, sub-low bullshit.

i Find it also works best when using the same PAIR of mic pres... putting each mic to a diffferent pre alays gives me strange results.

S20 is great for this and affordable! It sounds fucking HUGE on gtrs!

+1, except 2x57 or 57+201 and into TG-2. The same method applies to the "Fredman technique". I use either the amps own noise or pump out noise from PT's signal generator.

It's definitely not the same as two same signals and the result gets boosted +3dB, as you can never get them exactly in phase.
It is a bit more fiddly as you have twice the problems compared to just getting one mic in a good place...

 

[aviel]

for me the fredman style worked the best.. its kind of the same i guess because mic are in phase, and elimintaes nast fizz

 

[Clark Kent]

Yeah I guess the Fredman technique does something similar. But just to be clear, neither of these techniques are just about getting mics in phase. F.ex. when I did those Redwirez Mesa tests. All Redwirez IRs are automatically in phase. So basically you can use a mic position that would be out of phase and it will automatically be in phase.

So what I did was flip the phase on the other mic and search for the nastiest sounding combination. What I was trying to find was a mic combination with the least note definition. It should sound somewhat like the distortion that compressors add. (in case you didn't know... compressors and limiters add distortion)

Anyways, I'm not saying that "this is the way everyone should do it". It's a cool trick and you should def try it out.

 

[RedDog]

Yeah, did no one in this thread read the sticky in production tips?

This is exactly what the fredman technique does. This is exactly how it's supposed to be done.

Now kiddo's, quad track your rhythms tonight with the fredman technique, mix, and call me in the morning.

 

[Clark Kent]

This is exactly what the fredman technique does. This is exactly how it's supposed to be done.

I didn't know this. All tutorials on the Fredman technique that I've read were just about placing mics in a triangle shape. I've read nothing about how the mics should sound... that's kind of the reason I never even tried the Fredman technique since it's just plain stupid placing mics with your eyes and not your ears.

 

[JeffTD]

This is exactly what the fredman technique does. This is exactly how it's supposed to be done.

No, no it isn't. The method to get mics phase accurate is the same, but the end result and (more importantly) the sound is completely different.

 

[drew_drummer]

I do this all the time. But I send pink noise into the fx loop return of the amp, I don't just use the amps own generated noise. It's a bit more accurate if you use pink noise, and easier to hear the peaks and troughs to locate the matching phase positions.

It definitely does not result in 'the same sound, just louder'.

 

[RichMinerva]

I do this all the time. But I send pink noise into the fx loop return of the amp, I don't just use the amps own generated noise. It's a bit more accurate if you use pink noise, and easier to hear the peaks and troughs to locate the matching phase positions.

It definitely does not result in 'the same sound, just louder'.

im not going to lie drew...you've baffled the tats off me!

 

[Ermz]

I knew about this and have used the technique..
But..
I asked Jens Bogren about it, when I had him as a teacher, and he said:
"-Why would you want to do that? What you end up with is the same sound, just louder. The point of using more than one mic is to find something that compliments the other."

And that makes some sense..

Jens is right on, of course.

I find this method works best when you phase flip, then look for the combination which results in the fizziest, ugliest tone you can possibly get. Leave the 2nd mic there, flip it back, and the resulting combination of the two will phase cancel all the shit you'd be trying to notch out (less successfully) with EQ anyway.

 

[PhilTheBeard]

dude, this is how I mic my GTR tones for EVERY record I've ever made.... Trident S20, play a section of the song with the most dynamic, loop it, go out to the live room with a pair of phones and put your first mic in a position that sounds really good, THEN take your second mic (in my case either a 57X2 OR 57 + 421, maybe a third i5 thrown inn) and move it around until like he said, the noise or tone gets the QUIETEST or it's giving you those really nasty 12k and above frequencies, you know you're basically cancelling out, in my case, all the high-end and bullshit but ALSO a hint of all the real deep, sub-low bullshit.

i Find it also works best when using the same PAIR of mic pres... putting each mic to a diffferent pre alays gives me strange results.

S20 is great for this and affordable! It sounds fucking HUGE on gtrs!

+1 love those s20 pre's

 

[aviel]

for me the fredman style worked the best.. its kind of the same i guess because mic are in phase, and elimintaes nast fizz

 

[miche]

This thread is giving me a lot of motivation. I am really interested in those alternative sweet spot search techniques.

1) turn you amp gain to full so your cabinet is making a lot of noise
2) now take the mic you like the most (in my case SM57)
3) use closed headphones to find a sweetspot (I always close mic)

---> sweep the mic through the edge and center of the best sounding speaker in your cabinet. You'll notice it gives you two kind of fizzy sounds, one on the edge and one on the center. This sweetspot for me would be when I have the same amount of both fizzy sounds. The fizzy sounds kind of eliminate each other.

Sorry for the noob questions, but you are not talking about guitar feedback, right? So how do you do that, would you leave the amp unplugged with the gain at max and the master pretty high?

When you talk about the edge, you mean the dustcap edge? Or the cone edge? Not too sure I understood the two fizzes you are talking about, and I am really interested

Would you be as kind as recording an MP3 of you finding the sweet spot like this and sharing this with us? I would really love to hear what someone else hears, and meet another reality than mine.

I do this all the time. But I send pink noise into the fx loop return of the amp, I don't just use the amps own generated noise. It's a bit more accurate if you use pink noise, and easier to hear the peaks and troughs to locate the matching phase positions.

I can't remember if that was you, but someone once shared this technique here and posted clips of him finding the spot that way. Unfortunately, I fell on the thread too late and could not listen to the samples, they were down.

Do you run pink noise in clean mode or with distortion?

And if I dare, do you think you could share with us your mic sweeping to show us how you can detect a sweet spot from pink noise? I haven't been very successful so far.

I find this method works best when you phase flip, then look for the combination which results in the fizziest, ugliest tone you can possibly get. Leave the 2nd mic there, flip it back, and the resulting combination of the two will phase cancel all the shit you'd be trying to notch out (less successfully) with EQ anyway.

This sounds interesting. So the idea would be to have one mic pretty loud and one in the back to do some "natural" EQ, with phase cancellation? Most of the effect audible effect would be on higher frequencies, right (like 3k and above)? In this technique, both should be on axis? Or in a fredman style?

 

[drew_drummer]

I can't remember if that was you, but someone once shared this technique here and posted clips of him finding the spot that way. Unfortunately, I fell on the thread too late and could not listen to the samples, they were down.

Wasn't me dude. I'm pretty sure I read about this technique in Sound On Sound a few years back.

Do you run pink noise in clean mode or with distortion?

It doesn't really matter, because you're sending the pink noise into the FX loop, which feeds straight into the power section of the amp. But I use the clean channel just so that preamp isn't making too much noise.

And if I dare, do you think you could share with us your mic sweeping to show us how you can detect a sweet spot from pink noise? I haven't been very successful so far.

I honestly wouldn't mind doing this, but I don't really have the filming equipment to do it I'm afraid. The quality would be shit, and I'd just get bummed for it. It's fairly easy though.

You just need to do this:


Tweak your amp till you've got the sound you want.
Setup the two microphones on the cab.
Route the signals into your recording setup.
Solo the first SM57 - position it somewhere where you like the sound.
Route some PINK NOISE into your guitar amplifier from your computer - into the FX loop return works best.
PINK NOISE should now be blasting out of your guitar cab - put some earplugs in, and some headphones on!!!
Unsolo the first SM57 in your recording application, so that you've got the two channels receiving signal.
Invert the PHASE of the second microphone.

Now... in your headphones you should be hearing the signals that the microphones are picking up, which are then being routed through your DAW software. One of the channels is inverted.

Move the 2nd microphone around the cab.
Move it until the PINK NOISE in your headphones goes REEEAALLLY thin!! You'll hear a filtering type of effect, almost like a wah pedal. Move that 2nd microphone until the sound is really thin, and really quiet.

Now... that's given you a setup where the microphones are in phase.

Disable the noise. Turn off the phase invert.

Record a riff. You should have a pretty fat tone, without any comb filtering. If it sounds flangey, then you've done something wrong.