Does Anyone Here Mic Their Amp Successfully?

squirrel211

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We had 2 shows this past weekend (meaning I couldn't go to the PRS Experience!) and it was the "best of times, and the worst of times."

The Friday night show, my amps were loud-ish; you could definitely hear they were the main source of the guitar sound. I had a GREAT time! I played without thinking, wandered into some really cool territory in my solos, and really could listen to what the keyboard player was doing during his solos (and mine, which was cool)! I even posted a picture of my PRS during the gig on the '2016 PRS Experience' thread because I felt left out....

The show on Saturday was completely different. We reset our mixer before the show, and the guys all wanted to keep the stage volume lower, and concentrate our own instruments in our monitors to reduce sonic clutter. I had to really crank down on my amps, and use the mic'd signal in the mains. It sounded flat/2 dimensional/irritating/lifeless/etc...

Does anyone get decent results with low stage volume? Like I-can-hear-my-pick-hit-the-strings low.
 
That's low! If it's low enough volume that you can hear your guitar acoustically over the amplified signal, does your amp even sound good at that volume? Sorry to ask a prickly question, but you can't expect to get anything good from the PA if you're not starting with good tone at your amp!

If they want to play that low, I would wonder if it's even worth using an amp at that point, or if you'd be better off using an amp modeler, something like a Line 6 POD or Axe FX and going straight into the system. No it doesn't sound as good as a crankin amp, but it might sound better than a whisper quiet amp.

Playing in a band is a funny thing. Half of them want to play so loud it seems like you never have enough amp, the other half want you to turn your 5 watt down. At least that's been my experience!
 
We had 2 shows this past weekend (meaning I couldn't go to the PRS Experience!) and it was the "best of times, and the worst of times."

The Friday night show, my amps were loud-ish; you could definitely hear they were the main source of the guitar sound. I had a GREAT time! I played without thinking, wandered into some really cool territory in my solos, and really could listen to what the keyboard player was doing during his solos (and mine, which was cool)! I even posted a picture of my PRS during the gig on the '2016 PRS Experience' thread because I felt left out....

The show on Saturday was completely different. We reset our mixer before the show, and the guys all wanted to keep the stage volume lower, and concentrate our own instruments in our monitors to reduce sonic clutter. I had to really crank down on my amps, and use the mic'd signal in the mains. It sounded flat/2 dimensional/irritating/lifeless/etc...

Does anyone get decent results with low stage volume? Like I-can-hear-my-pick-hit-the-strings low.

I have a parallel issue (but similar) with studio volume, because for convenience, 95% of the time I mic my amps in the room my workstation is in. So I use these small hinged gobos (this is from the RealTraps website, but I use the same kind of thing in front of my amps when recording). The idea is to absorb a good percentage of the sound in the room, so the mic will pick it up, and it allows you to turn the volume up a little more:

minigobo2x2c.jpg


These would also work well to reduce stage volume in a live setting if you're miking up an amp. They're quite good in my studio, and are very light weight and easy to shlep around.

As a bonus, they are great bass traps to control low end problems in studios, so they do double duty and I put them in problem areas when I mix.
 
You might need to get an amp stand and/or one of those amp shields... Man, I hate not being able to hear myself.
 
I have been through this quite a bit over the last year. We added a guitarist and we had the standard guitarist level-battle. We tried to fix it by running as low-volume as we could stand and adding guitar to the floor monitors, but it tended to cause the guitars to always sound too loud and everything got muddy so the vocalists could not hear.

Recently we set up so the guitars are run at reasonable stage volume as compared to bass, drums and vocals, and we check that the two guitar volumes are as close as possible to equal. No guitar at all in the monitors. With that, we found that we could turn the bass down a bit, the drummer doesn't have to beat the heck out of the drums, and the vocalists are happy.

We do mic the guitars for FOH, but they only wind up there in big rooms or for solos.

We arrange the cabs (both 2x12 vertical slant-top) angled toward center of crowd, so we can hear them well on stage and they can be heard out front, but without beaming the sound guy on the side. I find that I can hear me fine and I can hear the other guitar fine. Our last show was one of our best because we were not super loud on stage but we could all hear clearly. And the guitar amps were not anemic by any stretch.
 
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't bother playing at all if I could hear my electric strings unplugged over my amp. Do you not have a drummer?
 
He has Roland V Drums.

The real issue wasn't the volume of the amp, but the tone of the mic'd signal. The amps sounded pretty great, but the tone it the mains was significantly different; in a bad way. I moved the mics around, and wound up in the center of the cone for the best results.

I've never really heard a live band with mic'd amps that sounded good either... Just wondering if anyone had any luck!
 
He has Roland V Drums.

The real issue wasn't the volume of the amp, but the tone of the mic'd signal. The amps sounded pretty great, but the tone it the mains was significantly different; in a bad way. I moved the mics around, and wound up in the center of the cone for the best results.

I've never really heard a live band with mic'd amps that sounded good either... Just wondering if anyone had any luck!
Usually the best compromise is to have the mic pointed at the edge of the dust come. That way you get it to cut in the mix and have some warmth as well. Keep in mind what you hear standing 10 ft away, with your head well above the speaker is not what the mic directly in front of the speaker "hears". So you may have to dial back the treble since your head is far away most of the time. Get down in front of the speaker to have a better idea of what the mic picks up.
 
Usually the best compromise is to have the mic pointed at the edge of the dust come. That way you get it to cut in the mix and have some warmth as well. Keep in mind what you hear standing 10 ft away, with your head well above the speaker is not what the mic directly in front of the speaker "hears". So you may have to dial back the treble since your head is far away most of the time. Get down in front of the speaker to have a better idea of what the mic picks up.

That's where I was having the issue! I had pretty good tone, despite the low volume, right from the amps; it was the tone out of the mains that sucked. I moved the mics around as much as possible, but I was never really satisfied.

As an aside, I think being concerned with tone is a curse... I play gigs with a rig worth north of $10k, and I have the sound squashed into a non-descript, 2 dimensional nonsense because it has to go through the mains! I'm one step away from having dedicated speaker cabs in the mains stacks.....
 
That's where I was having the issue! I had pretty good tone, despite the low volume, right from the amps; it was the tone out of the mains that sucked. I moved the mics around as much as possible, but I was never really satisfied.

As an aside, I think being concerned with tone is a curse... I play gigs with a rig worth north of $10k, and I have the sound squashed into a non-descript, 2 dimensional nonsense because it has to go through the mains! I'm one step away from having dedicated speaker cabs in the mains stacks.....
Not sure what to tell ya then. That mic placement has always given me a fairly accurate representation of my amp tone coming thru the mains. Maybe the mic was bad. You've got 4 things really. Original amp tone, mic, mic placement and the PA itself.
 
That's assuming the person mixing behind the board doesn't jack everything up. Thru our rehearsal PA, I mic, everything flat on the board and it sounds good thru the mains
 
In one band I use an Audix CabGrabber and an SM57 with pretty good results. In the other band, self amplified.
 
I've never been happy with the sound of a mic'd guitar amp through a PA. Or a guitar direct through a PA...or through a PA in any configuration. And we have a pretty decent rig as club bands go. It just gets too mushed with everything else. I also notice this with other bands (and some of them very good ones) in the area also. That's not to say that it isn't the best solution in a bunch of circumstances...just that as a guitar player, I find the PA solution yucky...and not because it's too soft. It just looses its character. If we have a gig that requires very low levels, we get much better results with DRRI's, pedal boards, and amp positioning such that both guitarists have their amps directly behind them and angled up so that we hear ourselves well. Drums aren't mic'd in that case, and nothing but vocals through the mains. For the rare big gig that we do in very large clubs, we're at the mercy of whatever they have going there. In that case, they always mic the amps and run every drum through with its own mic, and bass of course also. For my tastes, the FOH mix for these big clubs are always a jumbled mess, where the vocals are never front and center enough, the bass and kick are always too loud, and while there is always a healthy volume for the guitars, they are always indistinct, regardless of the amps we're running through. That just seems to be "the sound" that is expected or at least accepted for large clubs. The only exception to this that I've heard locally is at Ram's Head "On Stage" in Annapolis and the Birchmere in Northern Virginia. Sound at these places are almost always fantastic, with everything run through the PA. But they usually have national acts there and are running equipment very different than even large venue clubs.
 
I've never been happy with the sound of a mic'd guitar amp through a PA. Or a guitar direct through a PA...or through a PA in any configuration. And we have a pretty decent rig as club bands go. It just gets too mushed with everything else. I also notice this with other bands (and some of them very good ones) in the area also. That's not to say that it isn't the best solution in a bunch of circumstances...just that as a guitar player, I find the PA solution yucky...and not because it's too soft. It just looses its character. If we have a gig that requires very low levels, we get much better results with DRRI's, pedal boards, and amp positioning such that both guitarists have their amps directly behind them and angled up so that we hear ourselves well. Drums aren't mic'd in that case, and nothing but vocals through the mains. For the rare big gig that we do in very large clubs, we're at the mercy of whatever they have going there. In that case, they always mic the amps and run every drum through with its own mic, and bass of course also. For my tastes, the FOH mix for these big clubs are always a jumbled mess, where the vocals are never front and center enough, the bass and kick are always too loud, and while there is always a healthy volume for the guitars, they are always indistinct, regardless of the amps we're running through. That just seems to be "the sound" that is expected or at least accepted for large clubs. The only exception to this that I've heard locally is at Ram's Head "On Stage" in Annapolis and the Birchmere in Northern Virginia. Sound at these places are almost always fantastic, with everything run through the PA. But they usually have national acts there and are running equipment very different than even large venue clubs.


That's awesome to hear! We are playing there next Saturday!
 
I have a tip I use sometimes. I have one of the cheap cheap Behringer mixers that only has one mic input. It was like $29 or $39. I use it sometimes when setting up mics. Plug it in, plug headphones into it, then unplug any mic you want to adjust from the snake, and plug it into the little mixer. Have someone play the guitar while you slowly move the mic around until you find the right spot. Then just unplug it form the mixer and back into the snake. This is similar to a trick used in the studio to listen to headphones from the mixer while positioning the mic. The little cheap Behringer is worth having JUST for this one task.
 
...we get much better results with DRRI's, pedal boards, and amp positioning such that both guitarists have their amps directly behind them and angled up so that we hear ourselves well. Drums aren't mic'd in that case, and nothing but vocals through the mains.
That's 75% of the gigs for us. I'm not using a DRRI (though I really want one) nor is the other guitarist, but sporting 1x12 cabs and standing "on top" of our cabs on stands makes a huge difference. We also stand on opposite sides of the stage, which makes for a better stage monitoring experience. According to those that I trust to have a professional, critical ear, we sound pretty good.

The biggest ally in sound support is a truly pro-grade sound engineer. Rarely does this include house sound guys. If they have the right tools and the latitude to use them, they will get that life back into the instruments. Being able to bring them to the important gigs is a game changer. (luckily, I have one living in my house at this time :D)
 
You need a better sound engineer. I think they have become unicorns anymore. Most shows or concerts go to I wish for a better sound engineer. Some shows I just want to walk up and take over the controls.
 
I mic amps all the time for recording. And yes, they lose something in the translation, because with close miking you miss the sound of the amp in the room.

The reflections in the room give you a picture of the amp that your ears hear; a close mic obviously gives you some percentage only of the sound coming off one speaker.

It's clear that something has to give in the close-miking scenario, right? It's a compromise.

Of course, when miking an amp and having the amp onstage, the player is still going to hear the amp, and get certain aural feedback that the player often needs. When I record an amp in the recording booth, but I'm in the control room, I miss that "communication" with the tone. Sometimes it's necessary, and sometimes not, but that's mainly why I like to record my amps in the control room, or be in the booth myself.

It's doubly hard to do a good mix in a live setting. There are talented folks who do it, and there are hacks. There's good equipment, and there's bad equipment, and not many non-touring bands can afford a Midas FOH console, a good set of flying speakers, and the moving van to haul all of it around.

So compromises are the order of the day.

I will agree that in a club setting, it is less desirable to mic the amps, and it's to be avoided if possible. But sometimes, it's just not possible.
 
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