Good way of finding a nice mic position on your guitar amp all by your self quickly

Hi!

I was experimenting yesterday to find the best position for my microphone quickly on my combo amp. I found a pretty easy way that I thought I might share. Nothing sensational but somebody might find it useful.

1. Place your mic on your cab
2. Get the mic into a mixer
3. Put on a pair of headphones monitoring the mic from the mixer
4. Turn up amp to a nice but not overbearing level
5. Start playing yer guitar ;)
6. Adjust the amp tone to your liking
7. Turn up level of headphones so it just overpowers the sound from the amp when standing around 10 ft away, facing away from the amp
8. Stand where you only hear the headphones (see 7)
9. Turn around and move closer to the amp so that the amp sound overpowers the headphones (or take them off)
10. Adjust mic and repeat from step 8 until you are satisfied

What I wanted to accomplish is to find the same sound in my headphones as I have "in the room". I thought it worked quite well, actually.

The difference in sound between very subtle mic positions is vast. More than I expected, but I'm almost a complete noob in this area...

yep! that'll work!

then there is the 2 mic method using a dynamic in close proximity to the cone but off angle about 20-30*....and then a condenser about 16" away facing the cone.

Use the same method you describe to be sure there isn't any phase issues.

The time you've invested in learning good mike placement will save you hundreds of software headaches down the line!

Worked very well for me. Found the sound, then put a couple of strips of duct tape for future reference. Thanks for the tip!

Yep, great method! I use a similar strategy in the studio every day!

The technique works espscially well for heavily distorted tones and gives you a good grasp of how EQ varies across the speaker cone. I like to find out all the sweet spots so I can EQ out nasty frequencies just with mic placement.

Rob

I like to find out all the sweet spots so I can EQ out nasty frequencies just with mic placement.


And there you have it! Take minutes to save hours. :mrgreen: