Recording an Amped Electric Guitar

Recording an Amped Electric Guitar
by Tony Koretz http://www.koretzmusic.com/tony.html

Tone and tuning

Before I begin to talk about the actual micing of a guitar amp, I want to deal with some basics. First up, it's important to use a nice sounding guitar, with strings in primo condition. No matter what you do with it, an axe with dead strings, or a poor quality one, will just not sound good. Poor intonation will result from using old strings. It's not a bad idea to check the intonation with a tuner in different hand positions before you start, and if you get wildly differing results at the various fret positions, then get it attended to. Make sure that you check the tuning before you begin, as even a slightly off-tune guitar can make it very hard to fit with the other instruments. Next make sure you have a nice sounding amp as well. Your tiny practice amp is unlikely to produce a killer recorded sound, but on the other hand a 200 watt behemoth may prove difficult to get a really good sound without cranking it off the richter scale, and blowing the walls off the room! And speaking of rooms; make sure you are using a fairly decent sounding one to record in, and if need be, add some padding, or other objects round the place, to get it sounding right. I won't go more into that here, as it's another subject altogether. But experiment with things like: whether the amp sounds best: placed next to a wall, or in the middle of a room. If placed in a corner you may get an unwanted "boominess" from it. Now one thing to note here on amp settings, is that what sounds good to your ears while playing on stage, may not sound good when recorded. Be prepared to fiddle with knobs on the amp, to get the right sound for the room, and the chosen microphones. Commonly, you may need to remove a bit of the bottom end, and boost the mids, and maybe the highs a bit.

Playing technique

One thing that makes me cringe, is a poor tone, or poor tuning due to a bad playing technique. If you are not Joe Satriani, Dave Gilmour or Ritchie Blackmore, then take a listen to guys like them. Their bends are sweet and pitched beautifully. Make sure yours are too! They use a nice vibrato on long held notes. If you can, make sure you develop a nice one too. Be it fast, or be it slow- vibrato's the way to go!. Talking lead guitar here. Make sure your slides are smooth and accurate, and your notes are picked cleanly and clearly. Never sacrifice clarity for speed. Better to play within your ability, than to end up with a messy sound because you are trying to go beyond your capabilities. And speaking of a messy sound, if you are using distortion or overdrive on your rhythm tracks, listen carefully what notes in a chord sound best without setting off unwanted, clashing harmonics. If you strum a full barre chord on a heavily overdriven guitar, it might sound bad, whereas if you hit just two or three strings of the same chord, the result may be much more pleasing to the ear. It is vitally important that you listen carefully to the tone as you play. Try to develop a good ear for it. For me the secret of good playing is captured in: Tone, feel and melody. These are the things you as a guitarist can do to help get a great sound. Now for the recording engineer, who may or may not be the same person as the player, here are a few tips.

The Use of Effects

Should you record with effects or add them later? Well, I use both methods depending on the song, the effect and what I am trying to achieve. For rhythm playing, I often record with a bit of reverb from my outboard effects unit, sent into the amp's effects loop. Don't overdo it, because you can always add more later, but you can't take it away. Sometimes I record with a totally dry signal. One thing I never do, is record using an amp's built-in reverb, as they usually aren't that great sounding. With lead guitar, I always record using effects. The reason being, is that I use the effects to shape the way I play, and usually have a certain effect in mind from the outset. Two things to note here though, are don't overdue the amount of reverb or delay, as it can washout the sound and make it hard to mix in later, and try to set any delay times to match the tempo of the song. I won't go into effects types here as that's not the aim of this article.

Microphone placement

I have tried all manner of mic arrangements when recording a guitar amp, but instead of going through all the possibilities, I will just give you my favorite configuration. It's easy to set up and it always works. It's a three mic technique. First, I place two dynamic microphones at 90 degrees to each other, aimed at the center of a speaker, close to the grille of the amp. These mics therefore, are 45 degrees from the center of the cone but aiming at the cone's body.

They pick up the highs from the center, without so much harshness, and also get the bottom end without so much boominess, as if the were placed straight on, at right angles to the cone and aimed the outer edge. Being at 90 degrees to each other, means they are less likely to create phasing problems. So if you imagine a triangle, the two mics would meet at the tip of one side of the triangle, and that tip would be at the center of the speaker cone. As for mic choices, I always use one Shure sm57, and one mic with different characteristics. Experiment here. I most often choose a Peavey PVM580i as the second mic. The sm57 has a high mid range peak, while the PVM accentuates the lower mid range more. The third microphone I use is a large diaphragm condenser mic, placed out in the room usually 6-10 feet (2-3 metres) away, at the amp height, and facing it. This gives a more airy room sound, and also has a broad spectrum frequency response. You can play around with the mic balances later, at mixdown, if you have recorded them all to separate tracks. I can always get a good sound using this method. It is much less hit and miss than other methods I have used. Well there you go. Hope this helps you to achieve good results at your place. Cheers for now.

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