Recording - May 2014 - 28

First, however, grab yourself a flashlight and hold it up to the
grille, revealing the placement and size of the speaker. Some
engineers will just feel around for the edges of the speaker cone
but I prefer the accompanying visual. Alternatively, you can simply remove the grille.
If your cabinet has multiple speakers, it's not a bad idea to take
the time in finding the best sounding one... or the best ones, if you
plan on using multiples. This will require that you either move a mic
in front of each speaker and record a sample of each, listening
back in the control room, or that you stick your head close to the
cabinet. If choosing the latter, make sure to check the volume on
the amp first. I've learned this the hard way-no fun.
Once you have a good idea of which speaker(s) to go for,
and of their size, you can go about placing mics! Not all the
aforementioned mics work on all cabs. I'm giving some general
placement ideas and options. But as with anything else in
recording, there are no rules until it starts sounding bad. Use this
as a starting point and don't be afraid to get creative!
In 90% of the sessions that I've done where the engineer/producer didn't have a specific reason for avoiding the SM57, that's
the mic that we started with. Because of its tonal characteristics, I
like it on-axis, almost touching the grille, at the center of the cone.
If the cabinet is really bright, like a Fender Tweed or something
similar, I may turn the SM57 to a slight off-axis angle, or move it out
from the direct center of the cone, but not too much. Don't try to turn
one mic into several, or into a mic it's not. Grab several and mix.
When I use the MD421 and/or the RE20, I'll typically place
them halfway between the edge of the cone and the center, onaxis, about a half inch to an inch away from the grille.
I really like adding a ribbon to the mix here. For me, that's
been the Royer R-121, but as I mentioned, ribbons tend to have
similar characteristics across the board.
This one I will also place about halfway between the center
and the edge of the speaker, perhaps more cheated towards the
edge so as to accentuate the smooth, warm lows and creamy
mids that the dynamics don't highlight.
Some other quick close-miking ideas:
~ Place a mic at center and angle it out towards the edge of
the cone, about 1 inch from the grille.
~ Place a mic at the edge of a second speaker and angle it
towards the center of the first.
~ Grab two of the same mic (I use SM57s for this one) and
place one straight on and one at 45 degrees.
For close-miking I prefer the warm transparency of a ribbon
and the edginess of dynamics at closer range. I don't typically
like a condenser for close miking, although I know several engineers who do. Why not condensers? The condensers are very
clean and pure. I don't like that kind of purity up close. I want it
to blend with the cacophony of tones happening in the room
and serve it up with a nice shimmery bow.
But for far or remote miking, a.k.a room miking, I'll use a condenser. I'll throw one up about 4-5 feet or more away from the
cabinet, depending on the room.
I once miked a cabinet in a room that was about a half-click
away from echo chamber. There, I found it distracting to have
the room mic anymore than 12 inches away from the cab. The
situation will dictate the placement.
Blend big
I say "blend big" not because I'm assuming you want the "wall of
sound," but because in most cases, you'll want to blend additively. In
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RECORDING May 2014

other words, check your phase! Any time you have more than one
microphone on a single sound source, you run into the possibility of
phase issues. If you start blending those lovely mics that you've
placed and the sound becomes smaller, you have a phase issue.
Another way of checking this is to simply look at the compression and rarefaction of the sound waves inside your DAW.
Does one go up when the other goes down? That's a phase
issue. You can fix this simply by nudging one of the regions to
line up with the other track.
Yet another way that I've seen engineers tackle phase problems is by placing the diaphragms of two mics at exactly 90
degrees to one another.
A cool and old school way of dealing with phase, is this little
trick: Turn the amp up loud, with the volume of the guitar all the
way down, making the amp hiss. In front of your chosen speaker, wearing headphones, move the first mic around until you
find the spot where the hiss sounds the most broad across the

Recording - May 2014

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