Opinion on doubling guitar track

[Domurb]

I was wondering what your opinion on doubling guitar tracks was and the pros and cons of doing so. Also any tips on micing electric guitar would be useful. Thanks.

[shylessness4924]

Doubling guitar tracks with the same track (copy paste) = not very good (you should just increase the volume , play with ur EQ, Compression and Pan)

Doubling guitar tracks with a new track = meh, why not? give it a try, althought you might want to try to give that second track a different sound (play with the gain, EQ, etc) or else , its pretty much like copy paste....


As for micin ur electric guitars, well, If you want a nice sound and you dont really have a really good acoustic room, you might want to stick the mic right infront the amp. You can try to give a lil space between the mic and the amp if you like the acoustic of your room -- there might be a cool echo sound. Sometimes, the reverb from a room is better then any pedals. But you have to give it a try. Test it.
It depends the kind of music ur recording. For some rock n roll, try the room between the mic and the amp. If you're recording some punk or metal, stick it to the amp. the closer you get, the better badass sound you'll have.


Hope it helped a lil!


alex

[Domurb]

yeah thanks man today went a lot better with achieving some better tones. Also im diggin the demo.

[Tony Ramone]

I also have a question about micing a guitar amp - should I just stick to my SM57, or should I add in a condenser (SP B1) maybe 6 - 12 inches away (I read this as a technique somewhere)? I know the extra mic would add phasing problems so positioning is important, but would the sound I get be worth the bother?

[tehguitarist]

A technique i'm finding gets me killer results is getting a LDC, or any condensor i guess (i use an audio technica at4040 and a sm58 coz i have other stuff to buy before a sm57) And i XY them. Bacially i put them so the are bointing 90 degrees from each other. Um if that doesn't make sense, basically instead of having 2 pointing forward you turn them 45degrees either way. Play with the positioning and it sounds killer. If you're recording to 2 seperate tracks you should be able to invert the phase anyway.

[Tony Ramone]

Cheers for that. Thankfully I know what XYing is - didn't realise people used it in this manner though - thanks, I'll try it out.
As for inverting the phase, I know I could do that, but I'd be more worried about the signals not being totally out of phase with each other (i.e. only some frequencies being cut), just a small bit, in which case inverting the phase on one track would make the 'other' frequencies cut out - is that possible, or have I gone mad (I didn't sleep at all last night)?

[brandondrury]

I was wondering what your opinion on doubling guitar tracks was and the pros and cons of doing so. Also any tips on micing electric guitar would be useful. Thanks.

I go into great detail on this subject in my upcoming home recording book.

Doubling guitar tracks with the same track (copy paste) = not very good

I don't consider that "doubling". I consider that copying and pasting. I would personally give it a rating of useless or at least nearly useless.

should I just stick to my SM57, or should I add in a condenser (SP B1) maybe 6 - 12 inches away (I read this as a technique somewhere)?

Many, many great tones have been captured with a single SM57. Many great tones have involved multi-mics and condensers. When you add a second mic you increase your chances of phasing/comb filtering infinitely. My best tones have always came from a single mic. I don't feel the benefits for multi-micing are that strong, personally, but obvously not everyone agrees on the subject.

I generally place one mic in the spot where it captures the amp well. I think work hard on getting what I want out of the amp. It's MUCH better to put extra time on the amp than it is to put extra time on multiple mics. If you don't have to compromise it's nice to be able to put 100% effort/time into all links in the chain, but when does that happen in a real session?

I know what XYing is - didn't realise people used it in this manner though

In this case, the X/Y wouldn't be in stereo. (I guess you could, but I wouldn't). The X/Y is phase coherent and therefor avoids the distaster that most beginners get themselves into when they start getting too caught up in gimmicks and miss the fundamentals.

I'd be more worried about the signals not being totally out of phase

If two signals are "totally" out of phase with each other, there is no signal at all. (That doesn't happen with microphones probably ever). If this did occur, you simply flip the polarity/phase on one of the tracks and you are in business.

The concept you are referring to is accurate however. When two signals are not in perfect phase you will get comb filtering that sounds one way (comb filtering is NEVER good) and if you flip the phase, you'll get a different kind of comb filtering that sounds a different way. Regardless, you have a piss poor picture of the amp in either case.

I've not been convinced that adding two mics on an electric guitar is going to give me better sounds than a single mic. The big boys with a proper infrastructure do this because of the control factor and the fact that is SAVES them time. If you don't have an infrastructure that allows perfect phase alignment, perfect isolation from the real amps, and the assistants to do the grunt work for you this multi-micing stuff is a pandora's box/resource hog that makes music worse.

I have a big plan to do a Pepsi Challenge. I want to see if people can pick out the amp with 2 SM57s on it verse the amp with a single SM57.

Brandon