Everyone has had the moment… Why does this guitar and or amp sound like garbage? Lets go through a few quick things that can help you out..
Tone, Tone, and Tone
Always make sure the guitarist’s tone sounds good before a mic even comes near the amp… A bad tone in the air – a bad tone through the mic.
Sort through FX, amp settings and guitar setup first thing. Pushing the overall volume of the amp up or down can really effect the tone if you’re using a tube amp/head…
Also, make sure your amp and speaker cabinet are a good match for the desired tone… I’d never use a marshall head or cabinet for an “Indie” sound… Likewise, I’d never use a Fender Twin for a metal tone. Choose wisely…
Microphone Choice
Equally important as Tone is your choice in Mics. You can make any Mic sound good on a guitar cabinet, but you’ll get far better results with a mic you don’t HAVE TO MAKE SOUND GOOD. One that Sounds good naturally is always a good choice.
What do I use? Depends on the Tone.
The Sennheiser e609 is a great choice for a multitude of guitar tones… It’s specialty is in more “aggressive” guitar tones. It gives a nice clarity to Rock and Metal distorted tones.
The Shure SM57 is the workhorse of guitar mics. It can make just about any amp sound decent, but specializes in gain-y guitar sounds, but nothing super over driven.
These are your basic mics… Of Course, there are a plethora of different Mics that work for multiple situations.
Mic Placement
Be creative with your mic placement… Try out new things and hear how they sound. The difference between mic placements can COMPLETELY change the guitar’s tone.
Some quick ideas? Try 1/2 – 2/3 of the way towards the outside of the speaker from the center. The farther to the outside of the speaker you go, generally, the more high mids you get.
The dead center of a speaker is always a bad idea… On most guitar speakers there tends to be a some odd phase issues there, and phase issues = no good.
