Denver Recording Studio

Here at CCM we track a lot of guitars, i mean a lot of guitars. Electric, acoustic, you name it weve tracked it. Today Id like to talk a bit about recording electric guitars and a couple of quick tips for getting good sounds. First and foremost before we talk about mics and preamps etc.. I want to mention the importance of starting with a really great tone. Make sure that you are totally hyped about your tone before you even bother setting up a mic. Always try and track with new strings, practice to a click if possible and make sure all cables are in top working order to avoid unwanted noise on your perfect solo take eh? Once this is achieved we can start setting up for tracking. There are a number of great mics out there for electric guitar, I have always been a believer in using multiple mics to do your tracking with. Its always easier to subtract a track then to add one after the fact. Here are a couple of my favorites for electric guitar. Dynamic mics are great because they can withstand very high spl levels. Sennheiser MD 421 or 441 is a great choice if you have a couple hundred bucks to spend, as is a sennheiser e609 which is around 100.00, a shure SM57 is also a much revered mic for electric guitar cabinets. If you can spend a little more you might try a neumann KM 184, about 600.00. This is a small condesor mic that sounds awesome for electric guitars and just about everything else in the universe. youll want to experiment with different mics in different placements and distances from your cabinet. If you place a mic on axis near the cone you will acheive a very bright guitar sound whereas the same mic off axis pointed at the edge of the speaker will produce a much smoother creamier sound. Both can be desirable and blending them can be fantastic. If you are using an open back cabinet you may also want to consider placing a mic in the back of it. Record some takes with a couple mics out front and one in the back, try various combinations and see what you come up with. Note that you will always want to flip the track recorded from the back of the cabinet out of phase. this will result in all your track being in phase so that nothing is lost to phase cancellation . Thats all for now, next time ill get more in depth with microphone choices and talk about polar patterns. How they affect your recordings and why knowing all about polar patterns will help you choose the right microphone for whatever application you have at hand. Thanks- guitar junkie