Beginners: What looks to be working for me recording guitar

>>I've always had problems recording a miced guitar amp. The tone is thin and metallic sounding, no sustain, brittle, or muddy. I've tried playing with mic placement, dialing up my amp and software, and all sorts of other tweaks, but have never been happy. When I've asked about it on several forums, the response is generally that I should be able to just find a sweet spot with the mic and the recorded track should sound exactly like what I hear in the room. Nonsense.<<

Well, it isn't nonsense, but it IS very difficult sometimes; what makes it difficult isn't necessarily mic placement, but the fact that the thin and metallic sound is most often caused by an overloaded mic preamp.

A clean tone is relatively uncompressed coming out of the amp. Its inherent volume peaks overload the mic preamp (and sometimes the mic, depending on what you use), resulting in a brittle, thin sound. It's distortion, but it doesn't sound anything like a distorted guitar amp...in my humble opinion as a recording pro for 15 years, a good clean guitar sound is pretty hard to record!

The problem is, how do you get a nice, fat clean tone out of the amp, into the mic, and then into the mic preamp and recording gear without freaking out the mic preamp?

The most usual thing to do is to use a compressor, as a channel insert, or simply use the preamp's pad to reduce the incoming level, which, to my ears, never sounds right.

In effect, you're using the software more or less as a compressor; the software is compressing the signal, before you run it into your amp.

Most likely, a compression pedal would do a similar thing in front of the amp.

What's very cool, however, is that you've come up with a new twist on the whole concept. It sounds like a really interesting thing to try out. Thanks!

 

As a matter of fact, that is a great way to get the sound of a cabinet simulation on your signal. In the Feb 2005 EM, I mention how to do that in my cover story on guitar amp simulators. In general, most people who do that don't mic the cab as well--they take a direct signal from a line out on the amplifier right into Guitar Amp Pro, Guitar Rig, etc. But if you prefer the sound from the mic'd amp, that's fine too.

Absolutely. Both work. And both allow you to access just the speaker simulations (Guitar Amp Pro by selecting Clean Tube Preamp and Guitar RIg by only using a speaker simulation).

To make a general statement about sound, I'd say that the speaker simulations in Guitar Amp Pro are better than the unadjusted, untweaked Guitar Rig speaker simulations; however, since you have so much control over the Guitar Rig simulations, you can tailor them far more than you can Guitar Amp Pro, so Guitar Rig can sound better if you are willing to put in the time.

Many of Ed DeGenaro's clips are using Guitar Rig's speaker simulations. I do that also sometimes. Of course, I just ordered a Demeter Speaker Coffin with dual mic option, so that will be my recording rig in the future.

Orren