When you record a guitar in a loud room...

[Zork]

Cheers!
When you record guitars in a practice environment with the amps turned up, drums playing and so on - how do you do it?
I know basics like the different sounds I get by placing the mic closer or further frim the speaker, directing it at the center or the side but that's about it.
Do you just do it by try and error principle? Do you use EQ before recording? I'd like to get some tricks and learn about approaches because I have a really hard time to set up the mic so that the recording doesn't sound like shit. I'd like to get the most accurate sound possible before I even start messing around with EQs, comps etc.
Many thanks in advance

[Larry Mal]

What you are looking for is isolation.

Basically, the best thing to do would be for your microphone to pick up only the speaker from the amp and nothing else. That can't always happen, though.

So, get your amp up from the floor if at all possible. Get a carpet under the amp stand if you can.

You can use something like this:

https://www.proaudiostar.com/se-electro ... _IQAvD_BwE

Although I'm not necessarily recommending that solution. You can make things like it, you can make a framework and drape a packing blanket over it. Something to shroud your microphone away from the bleed of the rest of the room.

No reason not to get a DI box and take the guitar signal in direct simultaneously, also, you might find you get a better sound with some kind of virtual amp down the road.

As far as EQ goes, well, its a little hard to say, but it's safe to say that you could roll off all the bass under 60-70Hz or so. That'll keep some of the kick drum and bass guitar out of it, anyway.

[Zork]

Hey thanks. The problem is not about isolation but that the recorded sound doesn't sound good. Especially the fuzz and heavy distortion pedals sound like garbage and I need a lot of tinkering in the DAW to get it to a decent sound. I mentioned the loudness to make clear I can't use a small tube amp and place a fine condensor mic in the room, you know?

So, here's the setup: Bass VI in a 100Watt Roost head (very similar to Hiwatt DR103) in a 2x12" cab with Eminence Swamp Thangs. I use a Sennheiser e606 and AKG P2 in a Mackie Onyx mixer with Firewire Interface and I record in Ableton Live.

I basically wonder where to start to setup the mics to quickly get decent results in the pure, unedited recording because the never ending try-and-error-method drives me nuts...

[Larry Mal]

Hey thanks. The problem is not about isolation but that the recorded sound doesn't sound good. Especially the fuzz and heavy distortion pedals sound like garbage and I need a lot of tinkering in the DAW to get it to a decent sound. I mentioned the loudness to make clear I can't use a small tube amp and place a fine condensor mic in the room, you know?

So, here's the setup: Bass VI in a 100Watt Roost head (very similar to Hiwatt DR103) in a 2x12" cab with Eminence Swamp Thangs. I use a Sennheiser e606 and AKG P2 in a Mackie Onyx mixer with Firewire Interface and I record in Ableton Live.

I basically wonder where to start to setup the mics to quickly get decent results in the pure, unedited recording because the never ending try-and-error-method drives me nuts...

I guess maybe I'm not clear on what you are asking. You had mentioned that the room was loud and there were drums, so that's why I talked about isolation.

Of course, if you had isolation, you would be able to use a small amp, because the drummer and other instrument players would be hearing what your microphone hears through their headphones.

Not sure what else to say, though, because not knowing your amplifier or your setup it would be hard for me to recommend where to put the microphones. Closer to the speaker, you get more bass, etc, due to the proximity effect of a lot of microphones. You have to experiment with how you want the mics to face your speaker to some degree.

Here's a little article with some thoughts.

Not sure if I'm helping, but maybe consider a direct box, so you can send the clean signal into Live for later treatment.

[øøøøøøø]

It’s hard to say without hearing the specific recording and the specific sound in the room, but…

Most of the time when a recorded distorted guitar sounds bad, the sound itself isn’t right coming out of the amp.

The most common problem is that there’s too much distortion being applied.

If the sound is too small and thin and weak, try backing off the amount of distortion and listening again.

Also make sure that you’re not distorting something else downstream.

I just mixed a record where someone had clearly clipped the line amps in a mediocre analog console, and presumably didn’t notice because the sound itself was supposed to be distorted. It sounded really bad a required a lot of rescue work.

[Zork]

I guess maybe I'm not clear on what you are asking.

Could be I'm not clear either but I really appreciate how you're trying to help...

I think I'm just looking for inspiration to try a different approach. So to keep the question simple: How does any of you set up a mic for live recordings? Do you have a certain reciept, a trick or a specific method you want to share?

[øøøøøøø]

No secret approach.

Electric guitar is typically pretty easy to record if what’s coming out of the amp sounds right.

One thing I do sometimes find useful is getting just a bit of distance between speaker and mic… 12-24 inches. But not always, and maybe not in your specific case.

Otherwise, use a decent mic and pre, make sure it’s pointed at a sensible spot on the speaker (nearer the dust cap to make it brighter; nearer the edge to make it smoother), and go.

If something doesn’t sound right, check what’s coming out of the amp. If that’s fine, look for technical problems.

This is assuming one mic. Before adding a second mic, make sure there is a reason (and that you can get it sounding at least pretty good with one mic at first)

[Zork]

So, yesterday was band practice and drummer and I went at it again. Placed the mics close to the speaker halfway between center and edge of the speakers, dialed in the input gain of the mixer, moved the mics a bit left and right and back and forth. Turned out: The mics did pickup a very acurate representation of the actual sound indeed but: While it sounds really great when the sound can unfold in the room it has waaaaay too much of a clanky percussive attack up close and that's why it never sounded right or good in the recording.

So I said dammit! That's the nature of the beast, isn't it? Fender guitar, Jag pickups, low notes, thick strings, fuzz boxes - what can you do about it?
So we started from scratch dialing in the amp, all the drive pedals... still not good. Until my drummer had a moment of epiphany: "There's just too much attack. How about you lower the pickups?" he said. I did and suddenly it all worked out! The rest was easy. We placed the Sennheiser more to the center and the AKG on the edge and finally I can record my Bass VI how I like it to hear.

Still a huge thank you to you guys! Pointing out that it can't be so difficult lead me to look for the solution with a different focus and it turned out great!

[Zork]

It's actually kinda double-silly because a) I've got all my guitars setup with the pickups very low and don't know why I had them so high on the VI and b) clearly the "shit in, shit out" rule applied here, a.k.a. "use your ears". I messed around with mics, positioning, different dirt boxes and what not and just didn't hear what caused the problem... oh well...

[øøøøøøø]

Well done, glad it worked out!

[jorri]

Always had problems with Bass VI recording. Something in the high end turns up that i can't usually hear in other situations. Kind of a bad glassy plasticy attack quality that's hard to notch out. I put it down partly to being a Squier but their pickups are supposed to be good. You've probably worked out that the pickup height can remove this type of thing (its similar to other guitars having that metallic attack sound when their pickups are too high, except worse than that)

[Zork]

Yep, Bass VI is also much harder to fit in the mix than a regular guitar or bass. It's either muddy or clangy and it's even worse with distortion pedals. The structure of the distortion sounds much less dense and much more brittle compared to my other instruments.

[northern_dirt]

Hang a 609 or 906 over the top of the cab

But id only use that as a scratch track

[Shadoweclipse13]

But id only use that as a scratch track

Why do you say that? Do you not care for the sound of an E906 or something with them recording a VI? No judgment, just curious as I've got a couple E906s, but haven't done a ton of recording...

[MayTheFuzzBeWithYou]

For rehearsal recording I admire two friends and their (individual) band‘s routine to have everything miced and ready to press the record button. For the one it‘s easy - as it‘s only them who are using the room. But for the other one it‘s one out of three or four bands… as it is in our room.

When we did pre-recordings for the album we really just tried to isolate every signal the best we could… turned around the amps and put up a plexiglass wall around the drummer. It worked well and if we could easily record in there.

Also if you have good room mics - those can work like a charm. The sound engineer where we recorded a live session last february had a No Hype Audio SRM-1 which is a stereo ribbon mic - and is absolutely awesome!
No Hype Audio