HELP!How to use shure57 and sennheiser md421-II???

[nexus]

hello!

I have mesa 2x12 rect full back cabinet, shure57 and sennheiser md421.

How to place those mics?

Is there any pics of placement?

md421-II has 5-pos. switch, what pos. is best for guitar?

I have 2:90 amp, Triaxis, g-force etc. and sound is great!!
But how to record it????

Please help, if u got ideas.

Recording starts at next month.

THANKS!

 

[SeasonOfPain]

Welcome to the long road of micing guitar. You have two good mics, that's a good start.

First you need to know that the frequency responses of the two mics are complementary: the 57 will give more midrange, while the MD-421 will give you lows and highs. Blended they should give you a full spectrum. I'd reccomend placing them at the same distance from the speakers to avoid phase issues.

As far as the exact mic placement, well, that's where it gets interesting. Moving a single microphone's placement or angle as little as 1 cm or several degrees can introduce a drastic change. Closer to the cone gives you more treble and presence, while moving further out from the cone and/or increasing the mic angle removes treble / presence but increases fullness of the sound. It's finding the exact place for that guitar and amp with those settings through that particular cab that is the challenge.

What you'll want to do is:

1. Get a pair of high-quality ear-plugs of a kind that reduce loudness but keep a flat-frequency. Dynamic mics need a good loud source to sound good recorded (your pre-amp will thank you), not to mention that your amp will sound better cranked.
2. Play your amp loudly, bending down and getting your ears close to the speakers. Move your head around, noting exactly how the direct, close-mic'ed sound differs from what you're hearing in the room. Doing this you should start to notice that certain spots sound different right away.
3. Tweak your amp so that it sounds good from this angle, not necessarily in the room itself.
4. Find a rough position that would work for each type of mic (again, 57 emphasizes mids, and 421 emphasizes low-end & treble).
5. Now start experimenting with actual placement. While playing, have someone else (with ear protection!) move the mics while you listen with isolation headphons (preferably in another room isolated from the amp's room tone). Very slowly start moving the mic around until you've found the perfect placement point. Repeat with mic 2, checking how it sounds with the other mic. Again, if the mics aren't equidistant from the speaker you're also going to need to adjust for phase issues.

The last step is what took me the longest, as I didn't have a helper, so I needed to move the mic a tiny amount, record a clip, listen to it played back (both in isolation and in a mix) to see how it sounded, and then go and move the mic again. This was incredibly painstaking with just one person, so if you can bribe someone to help move the mic while you monitor it will save you hours if not days of time.

Of course, if you change guitars or amps or even the amp's settings you'll need to start the process over from scratch. With the Triaxis at least you can store the amp settings for each situation in a patch.

Hopefully you have a good deal of free time before you start recording next month.

I'm not sure about the 5 MD-421 settings, as I haven't gotten one yet. I've lately been using a single Audix I-5 (which I think gives a good middle-ground response between of the 57 and MD-421).

 

[nexus]

thanks for your advice and time!!!

Yes, there is lot of work... and time is not problem. There is just so much possibilities how to place those mics.

i have noticed that my sound is not so great at close range, but mics are always touching grill cloth. Maybe it´s time to take them little bit further...

I have tried to place mics like this:

John Petrucci: Well, I think I’ve found the secret, at least for me. I recently played a solo on Marty Freidman’s new record and I played a solo on Derek Sherinian’s new record just yesterday. In both instances I walked into the studio and told them I needed my cabinet and my head [Editor’s note: John used a Mesa/Boogie Road King head and Traditional Rectifier 4 x 12 cabinet] and two microphones, and got a guitar sound in five minutes. This is what I do. First of all, the cabinets are usually closed back, so there’s no need to mic the back. They have Celestion Vintage 30’s in them, and they’re the smaller Traditional Rectifier cabinets, not the big ones. I think the cabinet should be in a fairly big room. Anytime I’ve ever tried to put a cabinet in a closet or a small room, it just doesn’t sound right. There are too many weird reflections happening in that case. The speaker cabinet needs to have some sort of throw, like when it’s in a big room. You can put a baffle in front of it if you need to, like maybe ten feet out front, but otherwise I think it needs to breath, for whatever reason. I use a [Shure SM] 57 like this [Editor’s note: John showed mic position to be on axis, about an inch and a half radially outward from edge of dust cap in center of cone, close mic’d, almost touching grill cloth]. You never want to put the microphone in the center of the speaker; it’s just way too bright. Then you can fool around with how much off center you go. Obviously, the further away from the center you go, the duller the sound gets. Also, I use a Sennheiser MD421. That’s the second mic, and I position it the same way. You can either place it on the same speaker or on a different speaker. Then, you just blend the two of those. Usually, if you have two faders, the 421 is sitting below the 57. So the 57 is the basic sound, and the 421 is a little darker and it’s very fat.

But i haven´t got any success...

Any ideas for distance??? And how to avoid phase issues if there is distance to cone.

Hope you understand me, my english is not so good...from finland

 

[SeasonOfPain]

No troubles, your English is excellent.

I'd read the same Petrucci article, and what he said is spot-on.

I found that unless you have a really good room to record in, the sound from close-mic'ing is going to beat distant mic'ing in most cases. And if you're looking for a heavier Petrucci tone, you definitely want to close-mic.

Finding the right position really is trial and error. I just about gave up after literally months of trying. I tried different mics, different rooms, different guitars, and was about to sell my 4x12 and get a 2x12, which I had previously gotten good tone from. Then just last week I finally nailed a decent tone with the same set-up, just a different speaker at a different position. I actually was inspired by a promotional pic of JP sitting in front of his Mesa cabs. The cabs in the pictures were mic'ed, and had little dots on the grille just above or below the mic position. I tried it out, and managed to find the sweet spot that way. Same gear, same room, same guitar, just a slightly different mic position.

My setup may be totally different from yours, but the sweet spot I found was an Audix I5 on the upper-right speaker, a centimeter off the grill, on-axis, about 3-4 centimeters outwards from the dust-cap seam of the speaker. I posted some pics and a clip in this thread.

Another thing to consider, if you've thoroughly exhausted mic positions, is your input chain. Having a quality mic pre-amp, as well as decent A/D conversion and clock if you're recording digital, is an important part. But still not as important as mic position.

Can you post a clip so we can see what you're getting?

 

[hans-jürgen]

First you need to know that the frequency responses of the two mics are complementary: the 57 will give more midrange, while the MD-421 will give you lows and highs.

Not my old MD421, but maybe that has changed with the new model. The old one can dampen the bass response with its ring switch, by the way, but only one step. The MD441 (which one might describe as "more highs and lows") can dampen the bass response with 5 steps and the brightness with two steps with another small switch on top of the mic.

Here's a shot of the MD421 in front of my Marshall cab:

Nowadays I probably would use a flatter angle though. It also depends which side of the cab I'm using, because on the left there are two G12H30 blackbacks while on the right side there are two original G12M25 greenbacks.

 

[nexus]

Yes, i will post those two tracks here when demo is done.

Good to know about that 4x12 upper right speaker!! I have 4x12 too, but i use 2x12 at home, where i record some ideas for new songs.

HARD WORK!

 

[ibanez4life SZ!]

Definitely hard work! Finding a good recorded tone takes forver! I've been working on it for months, and I'm still not there.....