Micing an EVM-12L

[edgecrusher]

I've started tracking some scratch guitar tracks for my band at a friends home studio and am having some trouble getting a good miced sound from my Mark III and EVM loaded cab. So far everything has sounded sub par; scratchy, tinny, and fizzy with too much background noise. The rig sounds great in the room, but bad on the recording. We are using a SM57 close miced mixed with what I believe is an MD421 further away.

What are some good mic placements for the EVM-12L speaker? These speakers are loud as hell and I think I'm overloading the mic with the amp's master volume at 2.

 

[Anonymous]

i heard that before - some tips from my side:

place your ear at the speaker, if you found the good sounding location place the mic there.

do you know the characteristic of your mic? cardiodic? hyper cardiodic or 8? this will make a big difference in the sound you get. and with two different mics you often get phase trouble, frequency overlays etc.

if you record your guitar it doesn't matter at all what sound you have in the recording room - the sound in the mixer and coming from the monitors is what you get on tape.

by the way - engineers who fry their ears have short careers - start with a low volume sound.

good luck while experimenting!

 

[burnstudios]

start with just the sm57... you should be playing your guitar and your engineer should be wearing some headphones.. as you play he should be moving the mic around the speaker to find the sweet spot. Using 2 mics is tricky... to get the 2nd mic working correctly and to be in phase.. he should still be wearing headphones and moving the 2nd mic around until he gets a nice thick sound.. you can check phase at your mixer .. Have just the sm57 in coming through the mix.. then turn up the 2nd mic .. if the overall sound gets louder and your meters go up your are pretty much in phase.. if the over all sound volume goes down and starts to sound wishy washy and like a seashell well then your out of phase.

here is an awesome video on how to do just this.

 

[mr_fender]

if you record your guitar it doesn't matter at all what sound you have in the recording room

Man this is SO not true at all! The room has A LOT to do with the tone you get recorded, especially with distant mics.

Try moving the close mic further off axis. The closer the mic is to the center axis of the speaker the more bright and harsh it sounds. I like the sounds I get with the mic closer to the edge of the speaker cone, pointed away from the dust cap about 20 or 30 degrees. I also like to keep the mic about 6 inches away from the speaker cone too. Mic placement is very tricky, but gives you a lot of tonal options without ever having to touch an EQ.

 

[soundchaser59]

if you record your guitar it doesn't matter at all what sound you have in the recording room

Man this is SO not true at all! The room has A LOT to do with the tone you get recorded, especially with distant mics.

I dont think he meant it the way you took it.

I suspect he meant that the listener should not expect the guitar sound he hears in the room standing in front of the amp to be the exact same sound he hears on the recording playback. What you hear from the amp while playing is fun and great, but if you want to know what the recording will sound like you have to listen to the monitors, not the amp.

 

[soundchaser59]

So far everything has sounded sub par; scratchy, tinny, and fizzy with too much background noise. The rig sounds great in the room, but bad on the recording.

Great speaker, great amp, but even on 2 I doubt that you are physically distorting the mic itself. Amp on 2 at 6 inches from the speaker, do you really think it's putting out over 120db? It's possible, but it is a lot harder than you think to actually distort the mic diaphragm. Those mics are cheap, but they are a lot toughter and more tolerant than we give them credit for.

More likely that "thin fizzy" distortion is something over driving your signal chain after the mic. that fizzy sound, like wax paper on a kazoo type distortion or like a mosquito in the mix, is usually a preamp or a gain stage in the recording input chain some where.

I hate that sound too, but if it isn't coming out of your amp speaker that way, and it doesn't go away if you record the amp on 1 instead of 2, then it isn't the mic's fault. Recording input chains can be tricky to diagnose, especially when using software to record.

 

[Anonymous]

@ soundchaser: thanks for the translation - i am not a native speaker, though i try my best :? what you said was in other words exactly what i tried to express.

for the spl: why don't you start mixing/recording with the lowest possible volume? i found marvellous results with my ace's in low volume level. you can always turn louder later if the peak is to low or too less headroom (dynamics) or you want to chase for more harmonic feedback

the recordings i made with the sm57 always sounded thin and screamy at the beginning. my engineer always said "better to have all available frequencies" recorded, for later sound modelling and processing. to filter frequencies is no deal - but if they are not recorded - you cannot model them in the mix.

when recording with a dynamic mic in the very compressed high gain in the face sounds the limitation of recorded frequencies makes sense. when getting into more dynamic recordings where the gliding of the finger on the string can be heard and volume is changed by how hard the strings are touched i prefer condensor mic,s. they cover the full frequency and dynamic range range.

 

[soundchaser59]

I agree.

I dont have the facility to use the room at volume, so I have to close mic my cab inside a homade mic booth. I never got the exact result I wanted on playback, until I started using condensors on the guitar cab. And I went thru a couple dozen dynamics in the attempt, including the RE20.

Now I use a C414 and an AT2035 about 6 inches from the speaker (Commonwealth in a closed cab) and the sound that plays back sounds almost identical to the sound I get from the cab itself. I never turn the gain on the amp up more than about 20%.

But it is still vital to experiment with placement and angle. I have mine on axis pointed directly at the speaker rim, and I have Weber beam blockers on all my cabs. I record each mic on a seperate track, and the two tracks blended always sounds better than either mic by itself. If I had to choose just one, the C414 would win every time......