HUGE Tones, TINY Cabinet | Combo Amp Recording Technique
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- Опубліковано 14 чер 2023
- Small combo amps don't have to mean small guitar tone. With a little creative microphone placement we can get the unique sound of tiny combos without sacrificing fat tones.
TUBE15 Amplifier & Microphones: thmn.to/thocf/37hpbg3p47
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____________________________________________________________________
Small combo amps don't have to mean small guitar tone. With a little creative microphone placement we can get the unique sound of tiny combos without sacrificing fat tones.
TUBE15 Amplifier & Microphones: thmn.to/thocf/37hpbg3p47
Schuko to UK adapter: cpc.farnell.com/pro-elec/9680-black/schuko-to-uk-travel-adaptor-black/dp/PL12943
Monoprice US Amp: www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=611815
This video contains paid promotion from Harley Benton
More details on how CSGuitars implements product promotion - www.csguitars.co.uk/disclosure
#studiorecording #guitaramp #csguitars
More from CSGuitars:
Support on Patreon: www.patreon.com/csguitars
Join CSGuitars Discord - discord.gg/csguitars
Buy CSGuitars Merchandise - www.csguitars.co.uk/store
Website - www.csguitars.co.uk
Contact - colin@csguitars.co.uk
____________________________________________________________________
*Description contains affiliate links. Purchasing using one of these links will generate a small commission for CSGuitars at no additional cost to you.*
I did something similar with my amp. I have a Marshall DSL 40C with a Celestion Vintage 30 in it. I’ve been recording a Shure SM57 in the front and a Nady R4 ribbon mic in the back. Why not let the SM57 do the heavy lifting for the mids and high end and let the ribbon pick up the low end?
You are quite literally the *only* guitar youtuber that actually uses the same song to show differences, and that's why you're the only one I give a shit about.
Look how guitar and amp match 😍
It's always great to get the perfect sound going into the recording that is just right for the mix. However, if you can't it's better to have frequencies present that you can later cut than to not have them or try to boost them too much to make them heard. So good on ya. Great choice of amp to illustrate this.
The FX loop and spring reverb tank make this pretty killer for the price. At least, the monoprice I bought a couple years ago has a tank, your own mileage may vary. I've heard folks will squeeze more out of it by swapping the speaker or doing some kind of magic spell to the tubes - I haven't felt the need yet.
This set me thinking... my HB was smack up against a wall and did not sound great, so I moved it 18 inches away from the wall and now I could hear the “back sound”. Moving it a small amount and listening, I found a “sweet spot” where the front and back balanced. If I had a big enough room I bet I could even correct the phase difference... Thanks Colin!
As usual, Colin delivers a simple practical solution to a question you hadn’t thought of yet. If it’s technical, ask a Scotsman!
I have the Monoprice version of this amp. It can be very loud if you need it to be. Sounds way better than the price suggests.
Thanks for the ideas on mic use for these.
If I remember correctly, Alice in Chains did something similar on Dirt by having two SM57s pointed at each other, but one was facing the cabinet from the front like normal and the other was facing the back of the cabinet. Circle of Tone did a video on this trying to recreate the Dirt guitar tone and I thought it was cool to see a similar technique used here. Anyway, great video Colin!
I wonder what would happen if you used a darker microphone, like the GLS ES-57, or a Sennheiser e609/e906, for the back mic... would it accentuate the effect?
My understanding is that that technique was used on the Facelift record, using an SM57 in front and another round the back on a 1x12 open back cab or combo of some sort. Dave Jerden talks about it on one of the track breakdowns on here. Warren Huart or Rick Beato, can't remember which.
Dirt has a much more complex multi-amp setup for the guitars with different amps for highs, mids, and lows.
Just ordered one of these the other day. Can’t wait till it gets here. I have quite a few amps along with amp modelers but love the low wattage tube amps best
This made me think of a session I did for electric where I completely overlooked using a mic behind the cab, never again haha
I have one of those 1x8 Orange cabs that I've always struggled recording, I made a cardboard back to turn it into somewhat of an open back cabinet. I can't wait to try this!
Very interesting, thanks for sharing dude!
I have the monoprice US version of this amp. gives me a nice inexpensive tube amp at home.
Nice technique - I came up with micing ambience of the room on my own which also fattened up the sound while providing reverb (which sounded really nice when you weren't playing something tight like modern metal). Still only sounds like a fuller small cab though.
Great sounding amp i love mine
It sounds amazing
A passive volume control on the FX loop acts as a master volume enabling one to crank up the channel gain & volume... I put a "five cats" Voluenator on the FX send/return and it tames the overall volume just fine. My other pedals go direct into the input channel along with the guitar. It's a pity there wasn't a line out for recording but for the price this amp simply cannot be beaten!
I bought one of these a couple of years ago. It's pretty remarkable for the price. It even has a real spring tank for reverb. I've used it in plenty of recordings. It's been very usefull for me, particularly when stacked in recording.
Nice video; this is a miking technique I've used several times in the past, and always sounds good if it is the sole guitar in the mix since it fills up the sonic presentation of the amp given how the speaker vibrates forwards and backwards, and with two mics capturing that vibration from the front and rear.
That said, I find in certain - especially denser - mixes, this technique only adds that 5-10% extra oomph given how a fair amount of low frequencies from the guitar might get EQ-ed out of the overall mix in order to reduce mush and to allow the kick and bass to shine through.
Great video and I must try this with my Marshall DSL1CR. Although, it’s not fully open back.
Book are amazing but. You even get them made from films. I'm reading the novelisation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They got some guy called Jeff Tolking in to do them and he's gone to some amount of effort. So much detail and back story to the characters as well as a whole bunch of new characters. I like Tom Bombadill - I'm intrigued to see what role he plays in Sauron's downfall come the end
I hate when they create new characters for the book just to pad out 2 chapters. Do these authors get paid by the word or something? Shameful.
When the technique is significant enough I can hear a difference on my phone speakers *chefs kiss*
another really good amp I've found for this is the peavey rage it has a 1/4" line in. Use this like an FRFR from your modeler with the IR on. It rolls off the highs a bit but has some bottom end. I close mic it plus mic it in the room with an omni and blend with the direct signal. I'm going to try this on it also.
That's some excellent video editing. I figured it out, but just. haha
Nothing like a 20 watt Marshall DSL 201 (from the JCM 2000 era) pumping hard. Long live end stage overdrive (without blowing your ears completely to smithereens).
If in a studio, you just stick the valve amp in a booth and play it from the control room listening on the monitors
@@makinganoise6028 And how about live?
@@1972LittleC doing on the cheap, Tascam do great little units with very sensitive mics that can also take a line from the PA or Desk, these have auto level, however, studio quality live recording, takes a lot of gear, the Keys Player in my band has a degree in music production and does it as a day job, a good studio will have a live room, where everything setup correctly, so, as a band just setup and play, doing pro recording at a gig/venue, a lot of work from what I have seen, I just sing and play guitar, most of the time I just use my phone and do some EQ and add a bit of compression, reverb in a DAW or Bandlab, as it's just for my own reference to see if a song worked and where we need to work on bits etc, the Tascam units quite handy. My katana has a line out, which goes to the desk when playing live, if needed, if I used my valve amps they would be mic'd up to do the same.
Talking about the back of the speaker, no one believes me until they try it, if you're in a band and the sound is terrible in the practice room (it is, you know it) turn ALL your cabs / speakers to face the wall. Prepare to be amazed.
And if they won't do it, you know the real reason:
"But I can't see my MARSHALL logo anymore.. Boo-hoo..
OK.. It is a pain if your dials on a combo then also face the wall, but TRY IT!
Edit: Btw, I had one of those HB combos. It also has a 1W setting, which is also bloody loud! Sadly, I had to sell it, cos it was still too loud on any setting for home use.
Thanks for the interesting video, as always, mate.
Neat trick with the mics - I'd almost forgotten about that! I'll give that a try next time I do some recording.
I bought one of these HB 15-watters a few months back, but after a while (during which time I stupidly threw the box away) it stopped working. After you mentioned you bought one, I took mine out of its Corner Of Shame in the spare room for curiosity's sake, powered it up...and it works just fine. At the time of commenting, it's a nice little amp and the reliability issue - whatever it was - seems to have sort of gone away on its own. It's worth trying out with different speaker cabs too: I swapped the stock one for a 25 watt greenback for a more standard "classic rock" vibe, and plugging it into a closed-back 1x12 with a different (20 watt I think?) greenback gives a different sound again.
I don't think I'll ever need this but i was very interesting
Quite a neat amp really. Already have Harley Benton Amarok would get this if needed. Got Line6 DT25 combo it's amazing amp! Has two channels and I noticed one tends to sound lower both mirrored for compare. Also at times starts crackling loud, switching operating modes back and forth fixes for a bit of time. Need fixing. But man even though I knew it could require maintenance I liked it vs many other higher end solid state ones I tried, like Boss Katana flagships.
This almost makes me want to get a xomvo amp, but I'll apply the technique to my existing guitar rig. Currently running a 5W tube head into a Peavey 112-C (Celestion v30) and a Sound Town cabinet in which I installed an Eminence Texas Heat. Never imagined using all four of my mics on it at once, but now I'm eager to try it out!
*combo 🤣
Also, Seismic Audio has unloaded open back and closed back 1x12 and 2x12 cabs that you can throw whatever speaker you want in, whether Celestion, Mojotone, Eminence, or Seismic's own Quake12 speakers. They also sell 2x12 and 4x12 loaded with their own speakers. I have a loaded 4x12 and a 1x12 open back I put one of their speakers in. I might use this trick on the 1x12.
The distance of the mics from the cone should be as close to equal as possible or else you get a weird slightly out of phase effect... although there are plug-ins that will align the two signals with each other 🤘 Great tip about inverting phase 👍
The Shure SM-11 is omnidirectional and allegedly unprone to proximity effect. I have used them inside of open guitar cabinets and drums to catch a second signal to blend. I also have about a half dozen Little Labs IBPs so I can null-check the mics and match up the phase for the tone. I never recorded it but folks have told me that they never heard such a good kick drum sound.
I'm not sure I know of a DAW that doesn't have the phase flip button built into the channel. I would think using a plugin to flip the phase would use unnecessary processing power unless you're using that plugin anyway. I usually flip the phase at the mic pre so It's flipped before tracking but each to their own.
Leave it to Colin to help someone hopelessly attached to minimalist tone chasing, like me, understand the benefits of micing a physical amp over using Amplitube 5 Max that I bought when i moved into an apartment.
6:02 Headphone warning. 😂😂
great video, collin! just wondering, where did you get that sicknasty theropod lamp? 👀👀
I was gifted mine by a friend, but here's a link to what I believe is the same product: www.lisaangel.co.uk/disaster-designs-nordikka-orange-t-rex-dinosaur-lamp
Tried this few months ago with a supro, buster with some overdrive. It was a metal production, it sounded way more huge than the 4x12 and tube head.
Clever
Very intresting. I'm guessing the front and back mics are picking up opposite signals (polarity/phase hingy) because the speaker cone is moving away from back mic at the same time as it is moving towards front mic, and vice versa 🤔
Sometimes UA-cam speeks books to me when my hands and eyes are busy with other business. Liked Micheal York reading Brave New World and Hugh Laurie reading Gulivers Travels.
Id like to see what someone like glen fricker would think of this, curious to see how this would sound with a shitty solid state amp
This technique is common knowledge enough that I'm sure Glenn has at least tried it across his numerous years of recording guitar, but I'd like to see him revisit it in a heavy metal context.
There are some recording engineers who will even mic the back of a closed back 412 so they can mix in a small amount of that low thud - which seems rather redundant to me. The technique holds far more practical application for smaller open backed cabinets where close micing the front of the speaker alone gives a sound lacking in low frequencies which would be apparent to a listener in the room.
Idk if you're still doing TATAs but if so could you do a video on grounding your musical electronics?
I wonder what would happen if you used a darker microphone, like the GLS ES-57, or a Sennheiser e609/e906, for the back mic... would it accentuate the effect?
Good recording down to many factors, decent mics(plural) being really important, unless doing everything digital, people should post links to their UA-cam examples, to share how they are doing.
I remember books! Can you still buy them?
Hey Colin, I’ve got a TATA. Could you explain fretboard radius please? Cheers from Texas!
The version i think of is an old times wooden barrel vertical planks held in a circle by iron rings. Except the verticle planks are fretboards (frets on the outside) curved to form a perfect circle, for rolling the barrel etc, The fretboard radius is from the center of the barel to the outer side. So fenders are more curved because they are from a smaller barrel (often 9.5 inches radius) than gibson necks (often 12 inches radius 'barrel')
"bits and Roberts" 😂
Man, I remember when the Monoprice version was only $200.
"I SAID GOOD LUCK..." lmao
I noticed that the amp jewel was flashing on and off during recording. Is this something this particular amp does by design? I ask because my amp started to do that, but in my case I think it's due to voltage variations. Thanks.
The effect you are seeing in this video is a camera shutter speed artefact.
The lamp is powered by AC meaning that it flashes at 50Hz as the voltage rises and falls. This is completely normal and when we look at it with our human eyes the cycle of the lamp is too fast for us to detect so it appears to be continuously illuminated, in the same way that movies on film are made of 24 static images per second and our image retention makes it appear as one continuous moving image.
When filming the amplifier the camera's shutter speed happened to be fast enough that it would be slightly out of phase with the 50Hz AC powering the lamp. So the camera captures an aliased phasing effect where the lamp appears to slowly cycle between lit and unlit.
If you are noticing your lamp dimming when viewing it with your real human eyes, then there is a problem with the way power is being delivered to the lamp - and possibly the rest of the amplifier. As you suggest, mains voltage fluctuations might be a cause of this, or intermittent connections, or a host of other problems.
Dammit Colin... I blame you for me not finding your channel much, much earlier in my guitar playing career. So, let's see... where were you around 1996? 8-year old me could have used a primer on Valve Amps, how not to be swayed by early Line 6 Spiders, that pedals were more than just unnecessary extra expenses, and that I didn't have to be reading sheet music to play guitar. I'll never forgive you for my childhood ignorance.
this is how jerry cantrell recorded amps, i thought this won t get out :))
Reading FTW
How about posting something in detail, on how to correctly record a guitar in a DAW?
This appears to be one of those things I just can´t get over: Phase can be adjusted by moving the mics closer or farther from the speaker. It is a variable in time. Polarity is the thing switched, corresponding to the front- and back-sides of the speaker.
Polarity just means there are 2 of something and those somethings are opposites.
Phase is about the alignment of waves.
That polarity switch is a 180 degree phase shift. The opposite of a 0 degrees phase shift.
@@ScienceofLoudtechnically speaking they are only equivalent for infinite periodic waves...but this is one of those areas where being 100% correct will actually make stuff harder to understand for the audience since everyone are using the two terms interchangeably.
We all know what you meant, and i doubt that would be the case if you had gone into a weird detour about polarity 👍
@@ScienceofLoud Respectfully Colin, I must disagree. Phase is a phenomenon in time. The switch does not impact time at all. It only reverses the polarity of positive and negative, just like in Star Trek! There is no 180 degree shift that is universal to all frequencies. It would require a different delay for each frequency, and frequencies being a continuum rather than stepped...it is an impossible concept.
Flicking the switch is needed because you are micing the backside of the speaker, by definition reversed polarity: What is positive (pushed air) in front of the speaker, is negative (pulled air) behind it. No phase difference here if the mics are at same enough distances from the cone.
If there IS a problem with phase, it should be dealt with by nudging one of the two waveforms (in time) so they align and combine constructively. Phase difference corresponds to a difference in distance of two or more mics. Roughly 30 cm or one foot equals one millisecond of delay.
I hope I wasn´t too confusing.
This is a lesson for me in not responding to comments while waiting on a drink order in a cocktail bar.
Since we are getting technical and pedantic about it let me offer a correction to my statement and confirmation of some of your replies.
Yes, technically speaking all the button in the DAW is doing is inverting the polarity of the waveform, it is not shifting it in time. It is making the positive parts negative and the negative parts positive.
This action would look identical to a 180 degree phase shift for a continuous periodic wave.
We of course aren't dealing with an infinitely repeating periodic waveform in recorded guitar audio - so it's arguable if the concept of phase even applies at all. One would need to have a periodic function for phase to be a relevant measurement of location on the cycle at a given time. So any shift in time of an audio signal isn't technically a phase shift because it's not a continously repeating function. It would be better described as time misaligned as opposed to phase misaligned.
However we can break up the audio recording into each continous note which would represent a finite section of a continuous period function. Taking each of those as isolated individuals, a polarity inversion and a phase inversion would again look equivalent. And any combination of two waveforms with with polarity inversion is going to result in phase cancellation all the same - the physics doesn't really care about our terminology - it's just combining periodic waveforms whether they be infinitely periodic or a section of the same; whether polarity flipped or phase translated in the time axis.
So while technically the button is polarity flipping the signal - and phase as a concept doesn't apply to a non continuously periodic function - we still talk about it in terms of phase both for time shifts and for flipping the signal polarity.
Even the button for doing so in the EQ plug in is labelled Phi, the symbol for phase.
Time misaligned audio signals will only undergo phase cancellations if the time misalignment is on the order of the period of the frequencies in the audio recording - beyond that it becomes an echo.
I must also agree that using polarity in this context, while technically correct, may be confusing in communicating th concept to people less familiar with the science than ourselves. Polarity, as I mentioned in my initial reply, is a general term that can be applied to any situation in which there are 2 poles. It may be unclear if a listener relates the word to magnets for example.
Phase is perhaps a little less ambiguously about wave alignment and destructive combination, making it a more useful word to use to convey the general intent of the message.
@@ScienceofLoud I didn´t even think about time-misalignment and phase-misalignment being two different things by definition. Thank you for enlightening and broadening my scope. I just think that in order to make things clear and teach something, one should endeavor to use unambiguous terminology. The intellectual gymnastics required for phase to make sense in this context, separating a complex wave into its components and treating each individually etc, is in itself misleading and confusing for someone trying to figure this all out.
Practically if we look at this, time-misalignment of two identical broad band waves leads to comb-filtering, if we are able to measure the frequency response of the combination. Flipping polarity leads to complete cancellation of even a complex waveform. This is the difference I am trying to highlight. For two different things there should be two different words.
Sigh... I know it is a convention to call it a phase. I just think we shouldn´t.
Again, thank you for your lengthy and comprehensive response, which was way more than I deserve on my irritating crusade. :)
I end with the immortal words of one Captain James Tiberius Kirk:
"Have you tried reversing the polarity?"
Is it legal to sell electrical equipment to customers in the UK without supplying the correct 3-prong BS plug?
It's not being sold in the UK though, it's being imported from Germany. Essentially I've ordered a European product and had it shipped internationally.
I'm not entirely familiar with the specific legalities, but I would think I'm the one responsible for ensuring the connection is safely terminated since I'm buying a product designed for a foreign market.
Cab size doesn't matter if you pick up the signal directly from the speaker. You don't hear that in the mix.
Ah, someone who really needs to read those books I recommend
@@ScienceofLoud
I will not take advice from someone to delete comments they don't like. What for? People like that will never be objective and accept other opinions or facts that don't suit them😉
@@someone_else303 I delete comments that are racist, sexist, homophobic, hateful, or in other ways inappropriate.
If a comment of yours was deleted in the past then perhaps it was one of the above reasons.
@@ScienceofLoud I just suggested a video that deals with this topic and dispels all myths. This comment has been deleted twice.
@@ScienceofLoud
I have not insulted anyone nor posted any other obscenities. But whatever. Your channel your rules. Good luck
>Seriously, if you want to know stuff about a thing, try reading a book about it
Does Skillshare offer video lessons about learning to read?
“....due to the dimensions of their small box....”. Pause while the adolescent Americans get over the giggles...
The only thing i dislike about UA-cam channels like this is that eventually they devolve into "here's an ad for a thing".
Patreon is there if you'd rather support content directly, but as I don't pay wall what I make it has to be paid for somehow.
I try to make all my content useful and educational regardless of any promoted product.
@CSGuitars didn't mean to imply that you shouldn't do ads and i will watch every one. Every one. And yours are better than most, as you typically also provide use cases for the item and typically a technique we aren't aware of.
225 GBP worth of amp with 300GBP in microphones lol
Cheap microphones will make anything sound like shit.
Good quality microphones let you hear the DUT for what it is, regardless of its price.
@@ScienceofLoud oh for sure, I shouldve said more, what I was tangentially getting at is that well yeah it'll sound pretty good with a good recording setup. I guess that is in a way the point of the video though yeah? Taking some care in recording can make even inexpensive gear sound it's best. Also I do recognize that in the world of microphones those are still pretty affordable lol
Nah, mate, books are rubbish. Read this book once, was supposed to be a history book, but it was all wrong. Just people moaning about how bad the government was. There was a bit of a love story and then sone gratuitous torture right at the end. Nothing realistic at all. Can’t remember the title, it was a date like Nineteen Sixty-three or something like that. Anyway, it was written by this guy called Orwell, but honestly it was like he’d made the whole thing up!