Mercenary Audio - When to use Amplifier Simulators

I'm recording on my computer with Cool Edit Pro and the sound quality sucks. Here's my setting: Guitar through my ME-30 through the mic in line of my AWE64 soundcard. Is there something I can do (or something I can add) to have the same sound quality I can get from my amp?

First, I've never met an amp modeler that didn't suck... so if you're in a situation where you can't mic your speaker cabinet due to neighbor concerns... try the Palmer PGA-04 which will work as a direct box from your speaker outputs while properly loading your amplifier [so you don't pop the output transformer which is what will happen over time if you don't have the amp loaded properly and are using it at like full volume].

If you are in a situation where you can mic your amp... you might want to get the speaker up off the floor where they're not coupling with the floor [you get a false bottom when your speakers couple with the floor... sometimes this helps if it's like a "full stack" and you're mic'ing the amp from a couple feet away, but more often than not it's a hindrance.

The reason it's a hindrance is because you're probably close mic'ing, which means sticking a microphone within a few inches of the speaker... so the microphone will pretty much hear what the speaker is putting out... which means that if you have additional low end created by the speakers coupling to the floor, you won't be dialing in a proper low end to the amp, which means your guitar tone will most likely come out kinda small and shitty.

There are a few other reasons to get the amp off the floor... things like comb filtering, yada, yada, yada... but they're on a technical plane that would probably bore the snot out of you... in a few years they may be of interest, so let's wait for then... OK?

Microphone selection and placement... wow, the crux of the biscuit for all recording... seeing a you haven't specified a microphone in your original post I'm going to guess that you don't have a Royer R-121 or Coles 4040 hanging around... so let's go to the old $75- standby mic that has served guitar tones well through the annals of time... the Shure Brothers "SM-57"... the mic we all love to hate.

So, let's recap for a moment... you have your speakers up off the floor [I'm gonna guess on a barstool or the edge of a table... if you happen to have a road case for your speaker cabinet, on top of that will serve nicely], we have an amazing tone coming from the amp. We have our Shure Brothers SM-57 on a stand going into a mic pre [yes, we're gonna cover mic pre basics in the next part of the advices... but let's gloss over it for now]... now where do we put that microphone?

Well... we could put it like 18 or so inches off the logo plate if it's a 4x 12" speaker cabinet... that often works pretty well. The amp has to be pretty cranked to use it in that spot, and it won't really come to life in big way until you find the first spot where all 4 speakers combine to make one giant wind blast [but when you find that spot... well it's like finding that 'special spot' on that special lady... it leads to a really good time]... or you could close mic one speaker which is probably the best way to go if you're planning on layering more than one guitar track.

Close mic'ing brings its own unique set of problems and variables... if you think about it, it's really about as unnatural an event as can be... I mean really, when was the last time you stuck your ear like an inch from a speaker cone... uhhh, probably never? I know I try to avoid doing that whenever possible... but here we are about to stick a microphone there... so, let's examine some of the variables attached to sticking a microphone in a pretty unnatural place [though I will admit that the only times I have ever listened to a guitar amp from 2 feet away for an extended period of time I was working as a guitar tech... which kinda makes the 2 ft. mic'ing a bit irrelevant from an audience perspective as well... but I digress].

There are several elements to a speaker... the three that interest us today are the dust cap [circular round thing in the middle], the cone [the big part on the outside of the dust cap], and the surround [the flexible part that holds the cone to the basket]. The closer our 57 gets to the surround, the more bottom we're going to get. [we're only going to cover 2 dimensions in this section... we'll get to the third dimension in the next section... but they're all very inter related]. The farther we move our 57 toward the dust cap, the brighter the sound will get. So, by working in a lateral plane we can get the resultant mic'ed sound brighter or darker by moving the microphone left or right a little bit [unlike your girlfriend... in this case a half an inch of movement may be just what the doctor ordered]. Now we have a little front to back movement available to us, as well as the angle of the dangle

There is a phenomenon called the proximity effect that occurs with cardioid patterned microphones [a.k.a. "uni-directional" mics... the ones that only pick up what's in front of them]. This proximity effect will give you a greater quantity of low end the closer you get to the sound source. So... let's say you have a really bitchin' tone from your amp, and you've moved the mic left and right but there is still this zombie woof up in your eyes... the two places you can go are backward, or at an angle [or both if you're really a cowboy].

Say you get a really cool midrange to the guitar sound but it's a little woofy... the amp sounds the balls in the room so you don't really want to screw with that... so pull the mic back a bit [again, things like 1/2" increments can be the difference between darkness and light... move slowly and methodically so if you find that you had a better sound 3-4 movements ago you can get back to that point].

As you change the angle of the mic in relation to the speaker cone, you will also get pronounced differences in the ratio of darkness to brightness... what I'm getting at is that there are no real rules to where you put a microphone... it'll change from amp to amp and tone to tone and song to song so if you really give a shit about the tones you record, you'll be changing the mic positioning for pretty much every track you record... BTW, if you want to try a ribbon mic that doesn't quite cost as much as an AEA R-84 or Royer R-121... check out a Beyer M-160... they seemed to work pretty well on those old Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, etc. recordings... it might just work for you too.

This leads us to where the mic is plugged in. It is usually best to plug a microphone into a microphone pre amplifier. There are a bunch of different mic pre designs... transformer based, transformerless, solid state, tube... and the favorite of Banjo Marts everywhere "toob pre's". What's the difference between a 'tube' pre and a 'toob' pre you may ask? Usually about 200-250 volts to the plate of the glowy thing inside the pre-amp..

The cheap shit toob pre's you will find in the store that sells picks, straps and strings for a living is invariably a pile of current starved shit that has a toob for marketing purposes only. Not only do those pieces of shit not have a proper power supply to power a tube, but they have all kinds of cheap assed 'squalid state' [squalid state is the toob of bad non-tube designs... in other words, more cheap shit... like an 'Audio Buddy' or 'Presonus' thingy] crap between the mic and the output of the pre. Try not to be fooled by the kid at the guitar store whose only interest in the world is the piss poor commission he's gonna earn on the crap he sells you... look for equipment that will last you years into your career... it's way cheaper in the long run.

So... editorializing on crap out of the way... let's look at a couple of the mic-pre options... transformer based pre's... these can sound very full and rich at the front down to really wooly, soft, and blech sounding... again, design factors as well as your personal sense of aesthetic will come into play here. Transformerless designs are usually transformerless because transformers are expensive items while differential circuits ain't... though there are some pre's like the Crane Song LTD. "Flamingo" that are transformerless by design and sound absolutely wonderful.

Transformerless designs are often characterized as being a bit brighter/clearer/faster which is sometimes what you're looking for in a pre for a guitar sound.... but more often than not isn't... this again will be a matter of your sense of aesthetic for the song on which you're working.

Well designed tube gear, like well designed solid state gear can get you where you want to go... not all tube gear sounds "tooby"... things like the Pendulum Audio MDP-1A and the D.W. Fearn VT-1 are exceptionally clear and open sounding though you can indeed drive a measure of tube distortion from these mic amps you kinda have to work for it a bit.

Not all solid state mic amps sound snappy and thin... things like the Great River MP-2NV and the Phoenix Audio DRS-2 [to name but two, there are probably 20 in this series (like I left out the Chandler TG-2)... collect them all] have a sense of size and space to them. Things like the Martech MSS-10 can be as large and clear as the Pendulum and the Fearn I mentioned earlier... so, where does that take you?

Obviously, you can't have every mic pre ever built... I mean, where would you put them? ...so you'll have to pick a couple of quality tools that suit a particular requirement of the moment and add tools to your arsenal as you move along... as you develop your ears, your style of recording, and your sense of aesthetic the choices will become clearer to you... in the beginning you can get whacked with what I call "paralysis of analysis"... which means you're so afraid of making the "wrong" move, you make no move at all.

Dive in. Get a couple of pieces and play with them in your studio... the one you find yourself using most is the right tool for you to add to your arsenal. Try a bunch, pick the good ones, return the unused portion for a full refund... it's that simple.

The next part of the equation is going to be your A/D [Analog to Digital] converter and it's character as well as your D/A [Digital to Analog] converter so you know what the hell it was that you just recorded... but that my friend is a whole other can of worms we can open on another day.

- Fletcher

Home | Gear | This Just In! | Swag | The Black Pages