Miking Amps and Cabinets - Part I

by Jon Chappell

I'll open this month's column with a little

historical quiz: One famous guitarist went to hear another famous guitarist perform, and witnessed a less
than successful evening of synth guitar execution. The famous guitarist in the audience later said of the
famous guitarist onstage, "He spent all night trying to make a $2,000 guitar sound like a $300 one." Who
uttered this famous line, and to whom was he referring? Write or e-mail me the answer and a randomly
drawn entry with the correct answer will win one of the following: 1) an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii
for two; 2) a year's supply of Vaseline; or 3) a Guitar Magazine guitar strap. (Best of all, I'll print your
name in next month's column.)
The point of this trivia contest is not to deplete Guitar Magazine's warehouse of useless junk like guitar
straps, but to make the point that the simplest solutions are often the best. Case in point: I've seen guitarists
use thousand-dollar effects processors, rack-mounted amp simulators, and parametric EQ wizardry to try to
emulate a basic guitar sound. After all that, it still sounds pinched and largely unconvincing. The irony is,
expensive signal processors have to jump through hoops just to capture the sound of a mid-priced combo
and a cheap micropho ne. If you've wondered why you can't hook your pedalboard up to your Portastudio
and get a good sound, it may reassure you to know that it doesn't get much better when you use higher-
priced pedalboards. But with even a modest amp and inexpensive dynamic m ic, you can get realistic and
exciting guitar sounds. And best of all there's no magic, only a couple of well-established guidelines.
The mic of choice for years for miking speakers was (and still is, though others work just as well) the
Shure SM -57. This is a dynamic (as opposed to condenser) microphone, with a large diaphragm that can
withstand high sound pressure levels. In other words, this mic is happiest being slammed by a loudspeaker
at close range with low and midrange frequencies. Placin g the mic about 1-2 inches away from the grille
cloth is yields optimum results, and positioning it slightly off center (looking at the edge of the bull's eye,
not straight on) results in a fatter sound. Nowadays there are dozens of mics on the market tha t conform to
the high-spl, large-diaphragm spec, and some are even optimized for guitar cabinets (the SM-57 was
originally designed as a vocal mic).
N.S. "Buck" Brundage, designer of ART's Power Plant studio guitar preamp, has contributed his
technology and production talents to such artists as Al Di Meola, Fate's Warning, Steve Morse, and
keyboardist/producer Jan Hammer (Mahavishnu, Miami Vice). He offers this advice when miking cabs in
the studio: "A great guitar sound starts by getting your sou nd happening in the room. Once the amp is
tweaked to perfection, proper miking technique is essential in getting your sound to the other side of the
glass. Start with a boom stand, so you can easily adjust the vertical and horizontal axis of the mic(s). I
prefer starting the miking process with an Shure SM-57.
"After you set up the amp so that it sounds good in the room, put on headphones to hear what the mic is
picking up. Sometimes I'll replace a guitar with a noise generator and have the enginee r send white noise
to my headphones via a monitor send so I can move the microphone until I find the 'sweet spot' on that
particular speaker. I often like to use two mics, an SM-57 and a Sennheiser 421, because each will pick up
some quality the other misses. If you have the budget, you can put a high-quality condenser mic, like a
Neumann U-87 or AKG 414, about waist high, on axis, several feet back from the amp. This will help
capture ambient or room sounds. But less expensive mics work great on guitar s peakers for two reasons:
one, they don't pick up every little high-end detail, like rattle and noise, and two, they won't be so easily
overpowered like more-expensive ones that have sensitive diaphragms."
Generally, Brundage advises, a 57 (and mics like it) will provide definition and the 421 (and its ilk) will
create body. Virtually all the sound should come from the mics. If you have to make excessive EQ
corrections, the miking is probably at fault. "If you have to push or pull any part of the EQ past 6 dB, you
should re-position the mics, or even switch mics," advises Brundage. "Get it with the amp and the mics
before going to the board. The danger with board EQ is that you risk adding or subtracting something that's
not even there. If, or examp le you try to boost the highs and there are no highs in that range, you'll just
add noise."
If you're miking a 4x12 cabinet instead of a combo, your options are even more varied. "When you have
four speakers to choose from, you can put one mic on o ne speaker in the cab, and the second mic on
another. This increases you tonal possibilities," says Brundage. "Also, you can set up your room sound in
the studio, then take the head with you into the control room for further tweaking on the head. This way an
assistant makes the mic adjustments while you sit in the control room, listening to the results over the
studio monitors. Once you've achieved your sound, any minor tweaks can be accomplished at the board
using the individual channel EQ. It's at that point that you could add and monitor effects such as chorus,
delay and reverb. Effects can be monitored but should not printed. As a final note, there are many proven
methods for miking and recording guitars, but there are no 'rules.' Do what works for th e track and you
can't go wrong."

Next month: effects, room and speaker simulators, and stupid tricks that will make you sound like a hero.