As I've reported in past threads, I've got my heads and cabs separated, but they're in the same room. Originally, I did this because when I'm operating the gear by myself, and have the headphones on, and the guitar on, it's difficult to move to adjust the amps during a session because there are cables to trip over and get tangled up in. So I set up my rig with the amps within reach just to make adjustments easier while recording.
As a practical matter, however, if the heads were sitting on the cabs near me, it put the cabs too close even with headphones on, because there was just too much bleed into the headphones from the cabs. I couldn't tell which noise was coming into the headphones from the mics, and which noise was simply the acoustical roar from the cabs. So I moved the cabs to the other end of the room, which in my room is about 20 feet away from the workstation. This because every time the distance to a sound source is doubled, there is a 6 decibel drop in sound pressure level (this is a well known acoustic principle). Here's a shot of my setup:
In my old studio, I had a recording booth, and ran cables from the heads into the cabs in the booth. It worked great, and lots of session players do this in one form or another. But in my new studio, I don't have a booth. I did try putting the cabs in a large storage room I have that's adjacent to my studio area, but I wasn't thrilled with the sound in that area, it's unfinished space and sounds like a cavern. I may finish it, but...I dunno.
What I hadn't counted on was this, and it turns out to be a big help: When I sit down at the workstation with the cabs at that distance, before putting on the cans, I get a nice sense of the projection of the cabinets into the room, and it's easier to tweak the tone of the amp to my liking than it is with the cabs miked up in the recording booth was. Then, knowing the sound I dialed in -- because I'm in the same room -- I find it's easier to position the mics to get what I want to hear happening, and use gobos to better advantage when I need to do that, too.
Also, sitting at the workstation, my ears are lower and I'm closer to being in direct line with the projection of speakers' cones than if I was standing up and adjusting the amps right on top of the cabs.
So for the way I work, I think it's actually a better idea to do it this way than to have the more typically pro recording booth setup. Since it's so easy to do, I really recommend trying it this way. One more benefit - no tube microphonics from the heads sitting on vibrating cabs!
You need a long speaker cable, obviously. You might wonder whether that affects tone, and my findings are that with a good, moderately priced cable, it doesn't matter. To keep from tripping over the speaker cable, I got a couple of those rubber cable ramps.
As a practical matter, however, if the heads were sitting on the cabs near me, it put the cabs too close even with headphones on, because there was just too much bleed into the headphones from the cabs. I couldn't tell which noise was coming into the headphones from the mics, and which noise was simply the acoustical roar from the cabs. So I moved the cabs to the other end of the room, which in my room is about 20 feet away from the workstation. This because every time the distance to a sound source is doubled, there is a 6 decibel drop in sound pressure level (this is a well known acoustic principle). Here's a shot of my setup:
In my old studio, I had a recording booth, and ran cables from the heads into the cabs in the booth. It worked great, and lots of session players do this in one form or another. But in my new studio, I don't have a booth. I did try putting the cabs in a large storage room I have that's adjacent to my studio area, but I wasn't thrilled with the sound in that area, it's unfinished space and sounds like a cavern. I may finish it, but...I dunno.
What I hadn't counted on was this, and it turns out to be a big help: When I sit down at the workstation with the cabs at that distance, before putting on the cans, I get a nice sense of the projection of the cabinets into the room, and it's easier to tweak the tone of the amp to my liking than it is with the cabs miked up in the recording booth was. Then, knowing the sound I dialed in -- because I'm in the same room -- I find it's easier to position the mics to get what I want to hear happening, and use gobos to better advantage when I need to do that, too.
Also, sitting at the workstation, my ears are lower and I'm closer to being in direct line with the projection of speakers' cones than if I was standing up and adjusting the amps right on top of the cabs.
So for the way I work, I think it's actually a better idea to do it this way than to have the more typically pro recording booth setup. Since it's so easy to do, I really recommend trying it this way. One more benefit - no tube microphonics from the heads sitting on vibrating cabs!
You need a long speaker cable, obviously. You might wonder whether that affects tone, and my findings are that with a good, moderately priced cable, it doesn't matter. To keep from tripping over the speaker cable, I got a couple of those rubber cable ramps.
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I read these threads multiple times to try to learn more. I am a sound man at a big church, and I have mic'd guitar amps and other instruments for years, for live and recording purposes. But at home, I don't have the space or level of recording gear that you do. A lot of the stuff I've recorded in the past was direct. Yes, I've had Mesa Boogie, Budda, PRS, etc. amps and the last 4 things I recorded were with a POD HD. It was simpler and got the job done. Mic'd my Taylor for the last acoustic thing I did though.