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Recording Guitar And A Dynamic Cardioid Microphone

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Recording guitar is rarely ever as easy as sloppily plopping down whatever mic 's handy at the moment in front of the speaker grille and hitting record. Majority would even argue that mic choice and placement only play bit parts in a larger production that involves pre-amps, guitar amps, cable length, A/D D/A converters, tracking through a console clean vis-a-vis applying processing going in, and of course, the choice of guitar itself! Instead of writing a fully comprehensive work (and a very, very long discussion and debate), this article aims to address some basic guitar micing technique using a dynamic cardioid microphone (such as the venerable SM57) and a condenser (such as a Neumann u87). 1 mic technique If the situation calls for using one microphone, you can position your dynamic mic either as close to the speaker grille cloth as possible (less ambiance) or 3-6 inches away, either pointing to the center of the cone or off-axis. Listen through your monitors how the speaker sounds like, and change cones if you aren 't satisfied (as in the case of a marshall 4x12). Once you 've decided on which cone to record, fine tune the guitar sound by angling the mic towards or away from the center of the cone as it makes a difference in the tone coming into your recording. A condenser is generally placed a bit farther because of its higher sensitivity (and in some cases, lower clipping point with regard to SPL handling). 2 mic technique Applying the technique above, one may

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