Background researches on Guitars miking techniques

Dynamic mics, especially the Shure SM57 are more commonly used to record electric guitar because they are able to handle the loud and cranky sound of the guitar amps. Condenser mics also can be used, but more care has to be taken so that the sound recorded will not be overly bright. While the Shure SM57 has a frequency response that matches the mid range frequency of the guitar, it also has a compression effect on the loud guitar amp. On the other hand, condenser mics tend to pick up more lower frequency of the amp, which may or may not be a good thing depending the songs that is being recorded. Plus, condenser mics also give us the opportunity to experiment with different of polar patterns to get the perfect sound.

Mics placement also greatly affects the sound when recording an electric guitar. There are several positions that can give various sound:
1. Place a dynamic microphone directly in front of the speaker driver in the amp. This give a more punchy/attack effect sound and placing further or adding a room mic will give  it a natural ambiance of the sound.

2. Placing the mic at a slight angle from the mic. It gives more tonality and it gets a higher frequency.

3. Placing a mic in front of the amp and another mic behind the amp. It produce two different tones that allow us to adjust depending on the songs.

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 17, 2018 at 7:02 AM

    This will be useful when we mic up electric guitars, but first up is the acoustic guitar.

    ReplyDelete

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