EQ Magazine - August 2008 - (Page 25)

miked with an AEA R92 ribbon. That’s a versatile mic that clearly picks up high-end stuff, but it’s also great for documenting lower registers. An early ’60s Fender Vibroverb was matched with a Royer R-121 ribbon to get a natural and balanced tone, and a 100-watt Mesa/Boogie 1x12 combo was miked with a Royer R-122 ribbon—which is a little more focused when capturing low-end frequencies than the R-121. The mics were each positioned about an inch from the grille cloths. This approach picked up the sound of the amps, but not the room, so I placed a Neumann M50 about ten feet from the wall of amps, and about seven feet in the air. When Buddy played through all six amps— wide open in the room—it created this great, huge sound that bled into everything. But with that kind of massive, organic sound to work with, who cares about separation?” THE TINSLEY ELLIS MEAT WALL Guy isn’t the only blues guitarist to crank up and use bleed to his advantage. Georgia-born Tinsley Ellis is known by recording engineers for what they affectionately call his “meat wall” of sound. “[Producer] Eddie Offord was the first guy who allowed us to have all the amps, drums, and vocals in the same room with no separation,” says Ellis. “I still try to set up that way as much as possible. I love the sound of a screaming guitar bleeding into those expensive drum mics [laughs].” “I only have one large recording room in my studio,” says Jim “Jimmy Z” Zumpano, Ellis’ longtime engineer. “I’ve built ‘guitar lockers’ into one wall for isolation purposes, but you have to close mic them when the isolation boxes are closed up, and that gives you a sound that can be too tight for blues.” So for Ellis’ newest release, Moment of Truth, Zumpano’s “lockers” went unused. Placing a Shure SM57 a half-inch off of the bottom right speaker on Ellis’ Fender Super Reverb, and a Royer R-121 approximately six inches behind the back of the cabinet resulted in a decent sound, but didn’t produce the type of live sound the guitarist wanted. “We ended up adding in a Neumann TLM 170 as a room mic,” Zumpano says. “The 170 has a very open and wide pickup pattern, and it’s a warm-sounding mic. I put the mic approximately three paces away from the amp, shoulder-high, and pointed it a bit off-axis to the cabinet. I adhere to the Jimmy Page theorem of ‘distance equals depth.’ You have to move away from the amp to catch the vibe of the room. More often than not, away from the amp is where the magic happens.” “I’ve always liked a beauty with brains.” Josh Homme, Artist/Producer, Queens of the Stone Age SIGMA Active ribbon microphone The warmth of a ribbon mic at a fraction of the price. for a retailer near you, visit sontronicsusa.com EQ-Sontronics 6-3-08.indd 1 www.eqmag.com AUGUST 2008 6/3/08 9:22:16 AM EQ 25 http://sontronicsusa.com http://sontronicsusa.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - August 2008

EQ Magazine - August 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Lyrics Born, Fink, David Kahne on Working with Paul McCartney, What a Future with no Record Industry looks like Tool Box ?uestlove Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 Apple Logic Pro 8 USM Mic Round-Up USB Mics Chameleon Labs 7720 Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - August 2008

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