AES Journal Forum

Comment #1 posted February 16, 2010
Great article. I can't wait for the results of the subjective evaluations. If this gets presented at a conference, it would be really helpful to have sound files in addition to the graphs. I work in diesel engine noise and vibration and a sound file is worth a thousand graphs. I assume that is even more true in the recording business.

In the section about the off-center placement of the mic, there was mention of the cardioid-like radiation pattern of the amp but I didn't see mention of the cardioid response of the mic. Maybe it was just obvious to the intended audience, but the response of the mic in conjunction with the response of the loudspeaker resulted in the attenuation of high frequency. Had the test been performed with an omni-directional (flat frequency respnse) micrphone, I believe the high frequency attenuation would have been less pronounced. I realize that would not be a real life recording situation and the room reflections would be an issue but it's something to think about.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the paper and I would love to see more work like this. There could be a whole series of "Science and Myth" articles. There I said it, I want to see more protractors in the recording studio.

Comment #2 posted February 16, 2010
I liked the article as well, a good start. I have been starting to do some recording myself and the techniques described are ubiquitously recommended on the various recording boards on the net, and also by local engineers I have talked to about recording guitar. The article does tend to ignore the issue of linearity though. Loudspeakers are not linear, and neither are tube amps. The measurement techniques and graphs essentially make the assumption that the guitar amp is a linear time invariant system, which is not entirely true. I am wondering what the impact of the microphone placement is on the harmonic content added by the guitar amp and loudspeaker. Through experimentation and experience I have come to believe that the loudspeakers play a very significant role in guitar tone. I would also challenge the assertion that the higher frequency content is not perceptible. Very subtle changes in guitar tone that are hard to even put into words can definitely be heard by some players, myself included. Perceptibility also depends a lot on the type of guitar tone you are going for, clean, dirty, lots of effects, etc. At the end of the day, what is important is how easy it is to get the guitar to sit in the final mix correctly and be heard, without stepping on other instruments. An article addressing loudspeaker linearity, impact on tone, and how the raw tracks fit into the final mix would be the next step in my mind.

Comment #3 posted February 17, 2010
Marshall,

I like the logic:
A picture is worth 1,000 words.
A sound file is worth 1,000 pictures.
Therefore
A sound file is worth 1,000,000 words. Audio wins.

Regarding the microphone pick-up pattern, you've got it exactly correct. Both the directionality of the microphone and the loudspeaker are in play here. While an omni microphone would rule out the SM57s cardioid-contribution to the measurements, it was a mission of this project to begin to quantify typical recording practice, based on the most common electric guitar starting point. So the measurement microphone was a 57, and the stated results are for the whole system, not just the amp.


Timothy,

You are exactly correct regarding non-linearity and time invariance. The piece tried to point out that a 'clean' guitar tone was used - very much to minimize the issue you raise. It's imperfect, of course, but the results may be viewed with a grain of (non-linear) salt. The whole system is wonderfully non-linear, the transducers and the electronics - the pick-ups, loudspeakers, and the tubes.

I should mention that the test was kept relatively tolerant of non-linearities by using a swept sine wave. So at least the harmonic components are minimized in the results.

Regarding perception, I welcome your comments and I share your point of view that there are many attributes of tone that guitarists and engineers seek out and savor that eek up above the upper middle frequencies. But the only way to know for sure is to do the subjective studies.
:-)

Comment #4 posted February 20, 2010
This article reminds me of my time as an engineer with Shure Bothers UK. My job involved going out with bands such as the Rolling Stones and Led Zepplin just to help the crew get the best live sound possible. I have some great shots of Jimmy Page's set-up (4 mikes on one cab!) if they can be added to the site.

Keep up the good work.

Andy Munro

Munro Acoustics

London

Comment #5 posted February 22, 2010
Woops- its Led Zeppelin! Is it possible to post pictures?

Comment #6 posted February 22, 2010
Hey Andy,

WOW. Sounds like a pretty cool job! I would love to see the pics, even if you can't post them here. You could use one of the free image server sites like Photobucket or Image shack, make an album and post a link?

I read a drum book recently that was talking about 3 microphone techniques for micing the drums, and was talking about a method of micing the snare and kick and then placing the third mic that off to the side and behind ~6ft the floor tom. Allegedly this method was stumbled across when Zep was in the studio and a recording tech accidentally bumped the mic and it swung around, and everyone in the control room was shocked when a giant drum sound emerged from the monitors.

I know I have often wondered how Page got some of the guitar tones on the early albums, particularly when options were so limited compared to today. Perhaps this is more legend than fact, but from the stories it sounds like Zeppelin was really pushing recording techniques forward back in the day.

Comment #7 posted February 24, 2010
Hey guys,This whole discussion has omitted the ART factor. Recording technics are going to change with the variation of any one or more of a set of variables.
A recording engineer should seek the particular tone that the artist wants to hear in the "sound pallette". Linearity is not a word I recall as used very ooften in tracking sessions. I believe Jimmy Page as an engineer was brilliant as an experimentalist, finding the optimal results in his given environment,for his client Jimmy Page. Mic placement IS premium EQ!!

Comment #8 posted February 25, 2010
Hey Joe,

The whole point of the JAES article was to shed light on the ART factor. Mic selection and mic placement are indeed EQ, and the research published here quantifies the spectral impact of the most common placement variables. We are trying to bring order and intuition to a very creative and non-linear process - less guesswork and more deliberate action; less superstition and more science.

Comment #9 posted February 27, 2010
Joe, I agree with you in the sense that when you are recording, you are going for a sound. I'll break any "rule" as long as the end results are what I'm looking for. But when you face a challenge such as instrument X just "isn't sitting in the mix right," and your looking for something else to try, having data can help reduce the time it takes to get what your looking for. There are so many variables, I appreciate knowing what moving a mic away or off axis of a driver is actually doing. I'm still going to listen to it when recording, but I feel it is helpful to me. Ultimately experimentation is the only way to go, that or experience, which is usually gained by lots of past experimentation.

Comment #10 posted February 27, 2010
Thank you Alex, for your reply.

I have often wondered how magnetics--flux fields, polarities, current induced field effect, ect.. of two electro magnetic systems( speaker and mic) interact.
In that a microphone and a speaker are virtually the same electrical device, does the positive pole of the permanent magnet present to the positive of the other device? I have often thought this might be why off axis mic'ing often proves to be a smoother sound IMO. The mechanical relationship of the two diaphrams is easy to comprehend, but should be optimal when squared up, dead center.(just seems to me) As soon as we drive a couple amps of current across the speaker coil we're confronted a whole new set of Phun Fizikz Phaktors. N.O.W--- Flip the polarity on 1(one) permanent magnet. What now??

Respectfully submitted with a headache
Joe Hancock

Comment #11 posted April 8, 2010
Having served as the Applications Engineer for Tascam, Fender Pro Audio and JBL, and taught audio recording at USC and UCLA for fifteen years, I can add that while we academically oriented engineers may wish to analyze and understand the recording art to facilitate a reliable method of doing things that can provide practitioners confidence in their own results, it is largely a waste of time and a misdirection of artistic effort. Musical instruments themselves are often made of wood (including guitar amplifiers and drums), and that fact alone makes tone production a random affair that requires cut-and-try miking to obtain something that sounds good. Consensus of what sounds good also has limited value and grave danger to artistic intent.

The more engineers try to obtain cookie cutter methods for irreducibly complex problems such as musical instrument miking, the more the world ends up with sterile, same-sounding samples and homogenized, boring recordings that fail to give musical art and artists the subtle differentiations of quality and sensibility that make music interesting and give it value. Without value, there is no reason not to steal music.

Famous jazz musician Paul Desmond (saxophonist with the Dave Brubeck Quartet) once joked that "A jazz musician is someone who never plays the same thing once," and in this innocent observation, defined exactly why it is unmusical and antithetical to musical art, to understand and predict it completely.

As a field recordist with Grammy-nominated recordings myself, I use unusually consistent methods of miking pianos, basses and drum kits, but notwithstanding setups that are left in place for a series of performances in the same room, have never obtained (and hope never to) the same sound from instruments, groups, rooms or audiences, and I regard these tonal "inconsistencies" as a positive, not a negative.

I resist the notion that we should spend a minute of our time studying "how to" mike a guitar amp and suggest we spend that time experimenting as the great recording engineers have always done. Experimentation, not method, is the engine that has created our great, and now declining musical heritage.

If you want to know how to mike a guitar amp, do it a thousand times.

Drew Daniels

Comment #12 posted April 15, 2010
With respect, I must object to Drew's comments that the analysis presented in this piece is "largely a waste of time and a misdirection of artistic effort."
The article never suggests that there is a single right way to record electric guitar - no cookie cutter is offered. It does offer data so that one might be a bit more informed when working some of the most-used variables in shaping the tone of a guitar track.
I abhor random recording 'tricks' and the aping of approaches by others that aren't informed by some basis in science, kept in check by critical listening, and inspired by creative drive. To my knowledge, studio discussions of the microphone position tweaks measured here were generally accompanied by incomplete or erroneous explanations. I wanted only to extract some general trends so that future engineers might know a little better what to listen for.
Myth and ritual may satisfy some, and can lead to great sounds - even practitioners of aroma therapy might be healthy. I'll take creative exploration guided by facts - further leveraged by the intuition that comes from knowing more about something - over random explorations, or blind repetitions, or simple imitations of others any day.
More knowledge, even about something as wonderful and non-linear and all-but-indescribable as electric guitar, does not impede us in our own personal searches for new, unique, better sounds. I think it actually helps...

Comment #13 posted April 15, 2010
I think this article more so inspires experimentation in microphone placement, rather than making any effort in teaching the correct way to mic a guitar amp. It's definitely the case that getting the same tone twice is close to impossible, and maybe not worth while trying to chase. As engineers we would much prefer to find the best tone we can, rather than chase something that happened before.

In order to do this, we must understand how the changes in mic placement (angle, distance, relationship to the center of the cone) will effect the overall sound. Having the knowledge of these changes will help us work faster to find our desired tone compared to trial and error style guessing. I think Alex Case does a good job of sharing his knowledge to help us make informed decisions when chasing the ideal guitar tone.

I personally feel the most confident changing things when I know, or can at least predict in an educated way, what will happen. While this knowledge can come from trying things many times, it is great to have the start point that this article provides.

Famous jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker said "Master your instrument, master the music and then forget all that stuff and just play." While this quote seems whimsical, the concept is solid to our profession as well. It's not that a musician can forget the musical concepts and play whatever they want, but rather that once they've mastered the concepts, they become second nature and an inherent part of the musician playing.

For us, we have to have a solid foundation of knowing how microphone placement changes the recorded sound. This is not to repeat tones and have technical way of doing things the same way every time, but rather to make decisions that will help sculpt the resulting piece of art. Since our goal is to create that piece of art, our tools (microphone placement being one of them) have to become an inherent part of what we know and do as engineers

I'd love to hear how other engineers have gone through the process of learning and more so experimenting with these microphone variables.

Comment #14 posted April 16, 2010
Interesting article!

I think that the point of doing this type of work (objectively measuring mic/amp behavior) is so that we can make better decisions about where to place a mic to get the sound we hear in our heads. Also from the educator's point of view, I need to be able to teach not just what to do, but also why, and the expected outcomes. I would hope that after I spend 4 years teaching a student, they will only need to mic a guitar amp a couple of dozen times to fully understand it, instead of 1000 times.

I guess (no actual data here of course) that the tried and true mic placement (SM57, close to grill, off center and off axis) has more to do with creating isolation while recording live in one room than with the actual sound quality. Over our history, studios have offered more and more isolation and I think that our idea of what a guitar amp should sound like has a lot to do with these old recordings of guitars. Very rarely does a recorded guitar amp sound like a real amp in a room.

Best,

Hendrik Gideonse

Comment #15 posted April 19, 2010
I have found this article to be most useful when teaching my students about guitar cab placement. It can all to often be the case that we recommend a placement and not provide the "whys" as to the choice of placement.

It would be interesting to see how other instrumental recording techniques hold up to this kind of testing. It would also be interesting to see how digital amp modeling holds up to this kind of scrutiny. For example do the mic placement options in Amplitube/Guitar rig yield similar results?

Many Thanks for a great article.

John

Comment #16 posted April 26, 2010
I think it's important to remember that the combination of an electric guitar and the amplifier being used constitutes a complete musical instrument that the musician is interacting and making decisions within the context of. In most recording situations, accuracy to what the musician remembers hearing as they played is generally chosen over what the amplifier sounds like to somebody else.

Comment #17 posted April 29, 2010
Robert Olhsson's comment could be no more perfect. I support his argument with the anecdote I offer readers here. To show what a waste of time is academic examination by engineers, of musical art, this account of a thoroughly witnessed event should put to rest the futility of non-musicians attempting to dissect and analyze true musicians or at least to put such efforts into perspective to preserve sanity.

In the late 1980's, my employer, a major manufacturer began a research program to develop a twelve-inch electric guitar amplifier loudspeaker driver for sale as an aftermarket replacement specifically for guitarists who sought better sound from their guitar amps than the $15 drivers typically found in stock factory amps. After working for several months to identify the desirable traits and electroacoustical characteristics of the most popular aftermarket drivers at the time, the company drew from its 1200 employees, the best "guitarists" to play guitars after hours in a room within their vast facility.

It was decided that the target price for the new driver should place it at a mid point between that company's too-expensive and thus fading market-share premium driver, and the least expensive of the popular aftermarket drivers. To that end, dozens of new driver iterations with various cone stock, voice coil length, BL force and electroacoustical efficiency, etc., were tried. A setup consisting of three--as identical as possible--enclosures were built and connected to an A-B-C switch for rapid comparison of driver sound while a guitarist played. Many months of this testing persisted until a candidate driver was finally chosen and put into production. The tests themselves--and I was ear-witness to some test sessions--had revealed sonic differences among three drivers chosen for low, mid and high cost, to be of truly crudely obvious dimension; no one short of persons with total hearing loss, could possibly imagine that any of the three compared drivers exhibited any similarity to each other when the A-B-C switch was operated, even when the enclosure positions were changed to try to mitigate spatial and reflection differences, or when the comparisons were done from the same enclosure position. The differences were night and day, akin to the differences between listening to studio monitors and listening to airport ceiling speakers.

To announce this new product, the company rented a large closed-off room at the Anaheim Convention Center for the NAMM show that year, and outfitted the room with a stage, lighting truss and P.A. system comprising their top of the line flyable, industry-leading equipment, a mixing console and operator, and hired a record label-signed band featuring Berklee College of Music graduate and blues expert, guitarist Doug MacLeod, who had mastered the art of blues guitar to a world-class level, and could theoretically demonstrate the drivers in the A-B-C stack to perfection.

As the demo show began, the company's executives and a sizable audience gathered and as Doug got well into a tune, the president of the company stepped forward and switched the A-B-C switch to show the differences--those really, really obvious-to-anyone who isn't deaf as a post differences--to the gathered crowd. An error appeared to occur at that point because as the switch was operated, no difference in sound was heard. Immediately, the executives had the techs open the switch box and examine the wiring to the three cabinets, but no problem was found. One of the executives strummed across the active guitar while switching the box until everyone was satisfied that the switch was operating normally. But when Doug MacLeod took up the guitar and played, there was no difference in sound.

The executives were at a loss for an explanation of how this expensive demonstration could possibly go so wrong, until it was noticed how Doug MacLeod had gathered a crowd of guitarists around him as he explained that he had to alter his finger technique to obtain what he expected to hear from the three different drivers; how it took less effort with the most expensive and sensitive driver, while he had to "dig in more" to get the same sound out of the $15 driver in the stack.

The best guitarists within a company of 1200 employees at the time, were no match for a professional guitarist, not even close, and would never have discovered that finger technique trumps and controls any and all engineering efforts to understand this arcane art. This is why I suggest that trying to find "the combination," "the sweet spot," "the answer" to getting consistent or desired results miking electric guitar is academic self-hypnosis and a waste of time. It simply adds credibility to the argument that engineers just don't get it, when they try to analyze art. As an engineer who, in a previous life, used to analyze everything and enjoy nothing, I would caution those caught in this enticing trap to work at discovering when it is relevant and valuable to seek a detailed technical understanding, and when wisdom suggests simple, temporal enjoyment is perhaps most appropriate.

Comment #18 posted May 1, 2010
I respect Robert and Drew's opinions. I think that the most important aspect of making a musical recording is the music, the art, the emotion, the feel, etc.. If I was forced to make a choice between a poor recording of a great performance, I would take that over a great recording of a poor performance. But as engineers, we can't afford to make a poor recording.

I think the discussion is getting away from this papers intent. It doesn't project a "correct" way to place a microphone, but just shows that changing the microphone placement will change the sound, as well as explains how it changes the sound. I liked Robert's point of the most important thing being to capture what the artist is hearing (or wants to hear), but if as an engineer, you don't know how to capture that, then the conflict will take away from the art.

If a guitarist is happy with the sound of their guitar and amp as they play in the room, but then don't like it on play back, it is the engineers job to correct that problem. While tracking, this is going to happen by microphone selection and placement. Since time is money, an engineer should know what microphone to reach for and where to place it without experimentation. This article pushes towards gaining that knowledge, thinking otherwise, in my opinion, shows ignorance. The recording studio is full of experimentation... and thankfully so! But an engineer should know what backing the mic off a bit is going to do before doing it, and this action can absolutely be predicted. Not perfectly predicted, but enough to make en informed decision.

I think we can all agree that the better the musician, the better the recording, but that point is irrelevant to this particular paper. If I could have Jeff Beck at all my session, I would be the happiest camper on earth, but alas... He is very busy.

Comment #19 posted May 3, 2010
Dear Moderator:

In most online discussions there exist rules and etiquette which govern the type of language that should be used in discussion. A good example of a forum rules and on language etiquette can be found at proaudioshack.com.

My understanding is that the AES is supposed to foster academic discussions about topics related to audio engineering and that the AES website is the venue for the discussion of these topics. I think that calling someone's work a waste of time is actually pretty offensive.

I find Drew Daniels' comments to be rude, dismissive and extremely unhelpful to the actual discussion of micing guitar amplifiers. While all of us recognize that the proverbial art is made in the recording studio, there are other ways than instinct to choose a combination of player, guitar, amplifier, effects and signal chain to obtain the sound that we are trying to capture.

There are reasons why engineers favor one type of microphone over another for certain activities. Mic placement really does matter and does change the timbre of recorded sound. It would be nice if as AES-member engineers we could discuss mic placement techniques without the influence of anti-intellectual heckling.

I am pretty disappointed with the lack of moderation in this forum. I don't really like to think of my career as a producer and educator as a waste of time. I am interested in learning more about my craft and I am wise enough to know I can learn valuable information and techniques by discussing and analyzing actual measured data.

It would be great if the moderator(s) could try to keep the discussion on topic and try to direct the contributors to be collaborative and less antagonistic.

Thanks for your help!

Hendrik

Comment #20 posted May 3, 2010
Excellent work, Alex. Good observations, all. We've long taught this, but this will improve the presentation. Bob, I'd wish to add that students would probably do even better in spending more time in the studio / performance space and less time in front of their LE systems.

Just one question, Alex: when did we start getting the fossils at the AES to take studio methodology seriously? Well, done there, too...

Comment #21 posted May 5, 2010
In keeping with 17 gratifying years as an audio educator, and 49 years of professional studio recording without a single dissatisfied client, I would like to offer the following technique I have found helpful in miking things in the studio and on stage, particularly when impatient clients are watching the clock and wondering if such carefulness is necessary.

Radio in-ear monitoring system belt packs may also be used to drive high fidelity headphones that offer a mini ring-tip-sleeve plug. When miking live or in studio, I often employ this as a tool to allow me to hear the soloed microphone's output in real time as I set up. This technique of listening set-ups gets me very close to the final sound of the individual recorded tracks, often negating the need for equalization later in the mix process, and in live-to-stereo productions, has become essential--to me at least--for mike placement.

Comment #22 posted June 11, 2010
Pardon me for coming a bit late to the discussion, but I only just found Alex's paper and enjoyed it greatly. However, I wished to point out a couple of items that that need looking into.

First, since the point of the article is to analyze mic/cab interactions only, the color of the combo's preamp should have been taken out of the equation by injecting the test signals into the amp's effect return, if available. This also eliminates the need to use a REAMP-device, which can also impart its own sonic imprint since these are usually transformer-based devices.

Secondly, and more important, the paper misses the forest for the trees in terms of off-axis mic placement by taking measurements of the mic while rotating it along its Y-axis only at the center of the cone. Indeed, since mic placement should always be done by ear (ideally while listening to the actual guitarist or at least some pink noise), it's very likely that any mic-angling is going to be taking place at locations other than dead-center at the grill cloth. And hence, the sound being received at the mic's capsule is not merely being colored by its off-axis response to the section of cone directly in front of the mic, but also by its on-axis (!) response to the section of the cone being pointed at (which can be relatively darker or brighter depending on whether the mic is being angled away from or towards the dustcap.)

Because mic positioning is a problem best performed in 3D space, Off-axis mic positioning therefore can result in a wide variety of tonal color even if the mic's off-axis EQ response is ruler flat.

Comment #23 posted June 14, 2010
It is a puzzlement to me. With this work I sought only to offer some data to help people know what to listen for when they make these adjustments. The article never claims to provide the single correct answer. The article never suggests one shouldn't listen to the sound. For me, this data helps make the searching-while-listening process a little more focused, more linear, more productive, and a little less random. It is hoped at least some other readers experience a similar result.

The preamp was left in the system under test so that consistent measurements could be made (and were made, but not included here) across a broad range of guitar amps, some of which have no effects send. The tone was deliberately clean, so the preamp was not causing overdrive and was only minimally coloring the measurements. The intent is to keep the system under test as close to a real world use of the guitar amp as possible, while making it as close to linear and time invariant as possible. It is a compromise for sure, but it makes the right trade-off, in my opinion.

The impedance was changed with a Jensen transformer which measures pretty darn flat above and below the bandwidth of the guitar.

Regarding my missing the forest for the trees, I can only wonder what Dallas would have me do. The three orthogonal placement variables are measured one at a time to better inform the reader when they place a microphone anywhere in a session. The reader is expected to integrate the three observations when working in 3 dimensional space. I agree with Dallas that, "Off-axis mic positioning therefore can result in a wide variety of tonal color even if the mic's off-axis EQ response is ruler flat." The article tries to empower us to master the process, so that within 'the wide variety of tonal colors,' we can find the one the guitarist wants, the one the composer wants, the one that suits the mix.

An off-center microphone can of course be angled, and often is. It might be angled back toward center, away from center, up, down, or off at any angle - there are an infinite number of possibilities here. The intended thought process was that one could - in any order - work the microphone out along any radius away from center, listening carefully; angle the microphone, listening carefully; and pull it back, listening carefully . For an off-center placement where one angles the microphone so that it looks back toward center, one should find it informative to note that the directional microphone facing back toward center is 'looking' back at - oh, there it is - the data reported in the dead center measurement.

The intent wasn't to find the best microphone placement for electric guitar; no such placement exists. The intent was never to measure the 'typical' placement of a microphone on electric guitar; one person's 'typical' is another person's 'WTF?.' The point was to begin to quantify the three primary placement drivers of tone individually so that one could more effectively suss out the tonal impact of complex changes to microphone placement, and so that one might explore more unusual placements in search of tune-motivated unique tones on future projects.

It's messy. The variables overlap. But doesn't this shed some light on an otherwise mysterious ritual? And isn't some data, interpreted with care and recognition of its limits, better than no data?

Comment #24 posted June 16, 2010
When we discuss guitarist's perception of their guitar cab sound, I hope we remember that the cab is typically on the floor and the guitarist's ears are at standing or seated height somewhere between 90 degrees off-axis to the loudspeaker cone(s) but rarely if ever on-axis, and that the ears are a stereo pickup also receiving a portion of room reverberant field input. Make of that what you will when selecting mic type and location.

When recording acoustic guitar, historically, I have noted that performers never get to hear their own instrument as an audience (or microphone) hears it, because their ears are typically more than 75 degrees off-axis to the sound hole(s) and top of the instrument, and their reaction to recordings is as one might expect, that the sound is too bright.

Here again, experimentation or simply multiple miking of instruments can shorten the time needed to make a mix choice, but in the case of acoustic guitar miking, never would microphone data be helpful in any way, beyond the study and mental cataloging that should have been done by any engineer with regard to microphones they might employ, and the spec sheet frequency response curves and polar data they may offer, long before the engineer attempts setting up a recording session.

We may also quantify the time needed for miking when we see a veteran engineer set up a nine-piece bluegrass music group in ten minutes, contrasted with a novice engineer who might require 90 minutes to assess and address the same situation--an example from direct experience--or by watching a $10/hour sound tech spend 20 minutes placing microphones in a foot drum for a House Of Blues show, and waste an entire sound check, which is sadly, more typical than extraordinary.

With respect to live sound miking in particular, it is also worth noting that most of the $10/hour sound techs working today, even in noteworthy venues such as House Of Blues, Whiskey A Go Go, etc., are not even aware of an Audio Engineering Society's existence, or what the terms "cardioid" or "directional" refer to with respect to microphones, begging the question of what any revelatory measurements or data can provide them, unless of course we are in industry where educated audio engineers work for $10/hour in 130 dB long-term environments, for audiences who don't care about good sound.

Still we should all appreciate Alex's tilting at windmills simply because of the value and ethics of providing any education or enlightenment, even if only a few individuals benefit from it over time. I have several former students who among other things have taken such information and become leaders in their field, one, chief of recording production for KUSC radio at Disney Hall in Los Angeles, another chief of operations for concerts and events for the city of Arlington, Virginia.

One final note; I have experimented successfully with the inclusion of a miniature electret microphone (Panasonic WM-61A, 6 mm omni), secured directly to the rear frames of guitar amp loudspeakers, powered by a 0.5 mA pick-off from the amplifier and fed to an XL male mic connector provided for instant cab miking use. With a little experimentation, a suitable location can be found and consistent results achieved for that particular cab. Total cost of parts is less than $5 and takes only a few minutes to install.

Comment #25 posted June 16, 2010
I never realised there was so much passion about guitar miking out there. Here is a TV piece I did for the BBC as part of a series on the guitar. Check out the main site as it has great contributions from some rather well know axemen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/guitars/video/andymunro/

Keep on twanging