Ok i know there are people out there on MT that do real recordings.

I have tried this in the past (mixing mikes together) and i feel i keep coming up unsuccesful. Its this fucking airy... like seemingly doesn't mix sound. I mean is this SUPPOSED to happen?

My set up is as follows.

Groove Tube Gt-55 condenser mic (Placed about 2 feet away inbetween the top 2 12in speakers on my cabinet.)
SM 57 (Placed up against the grill maybe 2inches from the edge of hte cone of hte bottom left speaker)

Going through an Alesis firewire mixer to my laptop.

Now i'm sure some people have heard this before, but the sound just sounds like the freqs or something are not meshing and just ends up having like alot of stray air sounds. I'm not sure what i need to do. Readjust mikes, do some eq altering? I literally don't have any idea where i should be placing my effort to getting a better more professional sound because i know this is how the "quality" sound is obtained. I've talked about it for hours at guitar center. Granted i would go there and ask myself but i live way too far away now.

Also sucks i dont' have anybody to play guitar while i just do a job of listening through headphones and moving mikes. Thats what i'd REALLY like to do.


Any thoughts or suggestions? I mean i could upload a few examples sometime later if that'll help.

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The mic configuration your using seems pretty damn standard, and I'm sure you probably have tried moving the condenser farther and closer to the cab. Don't touch the dynamic mic, that's THE spot for it. Knowing your situation I'm sure you probably have tried fuckin' around with the position of that mic too - it's easy to get frustrated and out of hand when you don't like the results you get with your sound.

Sounds like you're experiencing the dreaded 'out of phase' phenomenom. The total frequencies both mics are bringing into the audio field are definetly not adding up to much good mixwise. It takes a hell of alot of experimentation on your own to find a good spot with one mic, but fuck, throw another mic in the mix and I can completely understand your frustration. It's all about readjusting the mics until you find a good spot. The way I would go about doing this was changing the position of the mics, then recording a little riff, then listening to it on the monitors. I do it like this because I cannot be in the same room as the amp when I have headphones on - in my experience adjusting stuff like this is wrong because you're hearing both the signal in your cans and from the amp - not a true representation of the guitar sound as it's going down on tape.
Like I said earlier, try doing this with the condenser mic, because that dynamic seems to be in the right spot. Of course, I don't know the size of your room and what materials it's made of, blah blah blah, so I couldn't tell you the exact coordinates to put the mic [that'd be something] but as far as I know you know where to stick them, don't forget the subtlest adjustments can make a huge difference on sound.
Don't forget also to try adjusting the volume level each mic is bringing to your mix. For example, I've gotten good results before making the condenser half as loud on the board as the dynamic.
Sometimes I would just say 'fuck it', and tired of experimentation, just set the mics up exactly as pictured on some recording websites just to start recording ANYTHING and then build my mix around that guitar sound. I got decent results like that... but...
this situation is a huge example of why I'm such a fan of Line 6 and 'direct-in' recording. I never had a problem with the sound of my mixes after I embraced this world. I used to be dead set on micing everything guitarwise, but then when I started going direct in and doing better layering of guitars with better sounds overall my recordings really took a living dimension. I'm just saying, you always have other options.
There's a ton of resources out there for micing guitars that I can't even remember now. I'm sure you'll pick up some good ideas from them. Google it, and they will come.

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Damn good post. Yeah you knew exactly what i'm talking about. I mean if i were to use one or hte other mike on its own it would be dead on sounding hella nice. But together, that freaking air sound. Well i can understand about different room but i blast it loud enough through my studio headphones the (HD-280 ) which really cancel outside sound (when playing music loud enough through the phones haha)

The volume between the mikes that was an answer i was looking for. I was kind of doing it the other way around. Maybe i'll give that a shot, and now that i think about it, that might work. Because i know the condenser is more for.... the ambience than for what not. Well not completely but thats what it definately does.

Yeah i have a direct out on my amp and the guy at guitar center said its one of the best made for guitr, so i'll have to give it a shot. I use it for bass with great results Yes i use my rediculously expensive tube amp for my bass. (just for recording) But as it looks i've seen pro bands using this amp for live play on bass. Anybody else heard that? The crate bv-300h.?

Anyways, i'm i kinda don't like the idea of direct out on guitar but i can't knock quality, or just good sounds.

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Don't forget dude you don't have to go 100% direct in all the way.

On my old bands first demo for the rhythm guitars I recorded 2 tracks of standard dynamic mic'd cab and 2 tracks of direct in guitar, and then criss crossed the signals in the final guitar mix like so:

Left Speaker - 1 mic'd cab signal & 1 direct in signal
Right Speaker - other mic'd cab signal & other direct in signal

The direct in guitar signals were fed through an old ART mono tube preamp I got for like $80 at Sam Ash, before hitting the mixing console.

These parts were panned 50% hard left and 50% hard right, so the balance knobs for each left speaker part were at like 9 o'clock, and the right speaker parts were at 3 o'clock. I remember I made the direct in signals quieter than the mic'd signals, kinda because I didn't know how to properly use cab simulation back then [this was like 2002] and I did get a bit of 'direct in harshness'.

So in essence I quadruple tracked the rhythm guitars but mixed the signal up in the final stereo field. The sound was awesome. Then, for the solos, I did them all direct in panned in the center with a teeny volume boost.

As time went on and I got better gear [Line 6] and time got shorter and I got fed up with mics altogether, on the 2nd demo I started just doubling the guitars direct in one at 9 and the other at 3 like above, and the sound was [obviously] alot clearer to my ears. Line 6's amazing cab and mic simulations helped alot. I still stuck with doing all the solos direct in center w/ the volume boost.

I'm such a big direct-in nut I've decided the next recording studio setup I create for my own uses will have no mics at all. Recording guitars totally direct in literally saved my ass, but my point is you can mix the mic and direct signals to get a super thick and full sound.

You'll notice I never mentioned anything about condenser mics... can't stand them on guitars, honestly. They take the badness of a room and multiply it by a billion. I've even had condesner mics pick up shit like my wall clock ticking over a Marshall cab screaming on 10. Only good for vocals, in my opinion.

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Intresting point. I'll have to attempt to toy and use the techniques. My problem is the toying part. I get too excited to record so... i use less messing around and experimenting haha.

Well about condenser mikes used for guitar. I tell you what i've come up with some pretty kick ass recordings using em. They are pretty full on their own. But obviously mixing and matching isn't the easiest of things.

As i've asked before in another thread, how do you handle your reverb and delay. I.E. are you recording delay live or are you literally going in after hte fact and adding it in to the various tracks? Cause i would imagine recording with live delay would be a SHIT ton better and higher quality, but thats just what i gather.

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Yeah, I understand what you mean about condenser mics, what works for me will definetly not work for everybody, there are no 'rules' in recording after all, just what sounds good to you.

I always do effects live on guitar or whatever if I KNOW that part is gonna have delay or chorus or whatever because to me the effect is part of the guitar sound not an afterthought. However, you can do sicker things with external fx AFTER you recorded a signal. For example, I once did a double chorus effect that was awesome by recording a chorused clean tone and then chorused that signal with an FX plugin on the computer. It was awesome.

I never add reverb on parts until I have everything recorded after. Even then, reverbing each individual instrument will give you a shity effect.. I like taking the entire mix and putting reverb on THAT.

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THATS what i wanted to hear. Good to go. (About the reverb over all) I figured thats what some do. I imagine it kind of helps tie it all together. Basically give hte illusion thats its all being played in the same room at the same time.

When i record i almost always have delay going non stop on my guitars. Even when i play. Its not OBSCENE delay like solo status, but for instance i mean listen to like death and there is always that delay sounding guitar. I like that. Often when i'm doing all my editing if i have like a solo if i didn't increase the delay while playing i might run it through later on. What is kick ass about my mixer is if i wanted to i could run it out of my laptop into my mixer run the hardware effects that are on my mixer live to that recording and back into my computer. I've yet to do it but i know it'll be pretty kick ass.

I've heard of doing the mic + direct in before. I'm curious on how it is.

Btw what kind of music do you play/record. One thing i have noticed is how hard it is to get some direct in things by themselves to sound believeable. I.E. I recorded a song using obviously mikes. Sounded good and then i had piano played over it. Well i use direct in on my piano. And when it was blended with the recording.. phew.. it was just horrible. But i figure i did a combination of say... sm 57 plug direct in for guitars, and say... condeser + direct in on my piano that might actually kick ass.

This is why i wanted to go to a school to learn more about the recording aspect of music. Yeah i love music but i dont' really want to major in it, as much as the application and recording. I'm considering later on going into some sort of audio recording buisness. I.E. you know channel 5 news or something or movie audio recording or television audio recording. You get my point. I think finding the hot shit spots for recording and making clean audio reproduction for money would be pretty sweet. Not just having a studio cause yeah thats cool but.. its not the only thing i enjoy. I even thought about making my own sound files and selling them. That shit is cool as hell too.

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- You said you always have delay going on all your guitars... are you talking about rhythm parts as well? Dude, at least with hi-gain distortion, don't ever double-track rhythm parts with delay or any other effects besides chorus on them, the delay trails can actually mess up the sound of the recorded guitar. What I would do, is if you have to double heavy rhythm guitars and they're supposed to have delay on them, I'd record the parts dry first and then add the delay on them after I mix them down, it'll be alot clearer this way and you won't run into phase cancelling problems that'll make the guitars sound shittier. I wouldn't use delay on the rhythm guitars period, I mean, Death never did, just for solos or other guitar breaks.
The only exception I can think of this are slower, heavier parts with delay. Anything faster, it just makes double-tracking harder and alot more pain in the ass than it has to be.

- You asked me what kind of music I play and record.. well, the band I used to be in, we played avant-garde symphonic black/death with circus music thrown in, but now I'm pretty much playing whatever, mostly death metal like Cryptopsy and neoclassical stuff like Yngwie. I don't record anymore, but I used to, almost everyday.

- What exactly do you mean by 'getting direct in to sound believable'? How exactly are you creating your direct-in signal before it goes into the mixing board? I've never had a problem in making direct in sound believable, but fuck, it took days of messing around. The entire point of direct-in for me is just trying to get a good sound period as opposed to just using it as a substitute for mics. 99 times out of 100 who ever will listen to your music won't care how it was recorded as long as it sounds good anyway.
The #1 thing I think you have to remember when you go direct in is that YOU HAVE TO CHANGE THE TONE CONTROLS ON YOUR AMP. You simply cannot ever go from the sound you use all the time live and plug that direct into the mixing board, it'll sound like a chainsaw with a guitar pickup on it! You need to set up and write down your own setting for recording stuff direct in. i.e. using less gain [which you should do for layered guitar parts anyway.] A tube preamp or D.I. box [if you ABSOLUTLEY need one, I never did] can also help you get a better recorded tone for direct in.

- The reason why it sounded bad when you tried recording the piano on top of the guitars was because the guitars sounded good all by themselves to your ears, but when you added the piano on top, the guitars had to compete in the audio space with the piano, thus making everything sound like shit. This is another reason I hate mics - if your room isn't 100 % ultra super padded soundproofed they are ALWAYS going to add extra information to the audio signal that's gonna end up clashing with all the other instruments. At least singers can be more flexible about using mics... you can't fit a half stack in a closet.
I can almost bet if you get a decent direct-in sound, mix the mic'd signals 50% lower than those direct signals or vice versa, and record keys only direct in, it'll sound awesome. You don't even need that condenser mic, unless I'm misunderstanding you and you actually have a real piano [which are a pain in the ass to record!]

I meant to show you this before, back when I was heavily doing recordings this program saved my ass many times : http://www.studiobuddy.com/
You basically d/l it and it is like a Q & A thing for recrding you run off of your desktop. Let me know how things go.

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Actualy i've seen it before, i probably need to get it again. No i have a keyboard and i do the direct out of it. But i have actualyl used a condenser mic to record the piano and it did come out pretty damn good.

Yeah i've tried the direct out with my settings and i was like this sounds like utter and complete shit, i would imagine it would probably have alot to do with not only the gain but the hi end highs my amp puts out. I guess i need to do some more toying with that.

Funny you should say that.. haha i have the ability to EASILY put my half stack in my closet and record it. Not that the closet is too big.. and now that i think about it i might. I did that at my old house too which was an even smaller closet. On that note i might be able to play it louder at that, without possibly disturbing the neighbors... and it would allow me to better make use of my headphones while mixing haha, AND save me room in my room. Wow good idea! At least its worth messing around with anyway

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