How far should I place a mic from a guitar cab?

Position across the speaker

The centre of a guitar speaker radiates the most treble. Pointed straight at the dust cap, a microphone hears a bright, cutting and sometimes harsh tone. Toward the edge of the cone the highs fall away and the sound gets rounder. The join between cap and cone is the usual starting point because it sits between the two. Move the microphone a centimetre at a time: on a close mic that is a large change.

Angling the microphone 30 to 45 degrees off the speaker's axis softens the top end without moving it sideways.

Distance

A cardioid microphone boosts bass when it is close to the source. That proximity effect is much of the weight of a close-miked guitar.

• 2 to 5 cm: full low end, very little room, the standard rock sound.
• 10 to 15 cm: less bass boost, a more even picture of the whole speaker.
• 30 cm and beyond: the room becomes part of the sound, and the tone is closer to what you hear standing in front of the amplifier.

Two microphones

A second microphone at a different distance receives the sound later, and the two signals partly cancel when mixed. Either put both capsules at exactly the same distance from the speaker, or put the second one much further away so it is clearly a room microphone. Then flip the polarity of one and keep whichever setting has more low end.

Before pressing record

In a cabinet with several speakers, listen to each one. They rarely sound alike. And set the amplifier's tone in the room at playing volume, then judge the microphone position in the control room or on headphones, not standing beside the cabinet.

In Zammoth

Arm the track, choose the input in its AUDIO FROM row and record. Loop recording keeps one take per pass, so several microphone positions can be recorded against the same section and compared take by take. To check two microphones against each other, add a Utility to one track and press its Ø L and Ø R keys to invert that track's polarity. See the manual on recording.