80's Rock Guitar

Hello, Yes i'm doing yet another video about going for a great live recording sound again but this one will be shorter than the last one on drums I promise! Less mics less hassle right.........right?

Today we're going to discuss how I got the guitar sound on my latest recording project Fast Lane - it was actually written with my current band Red Larsen in mind but with time constraints and people being busy i did end up doing 3/5 instruments myself so I'm taking most the credit....... sorry guys, I mean I wrote it too. Also shameless promotion, please go like us on Facebook

Okay all the boring stuff aside lets get into my inspirations for writing this piece in the first place. It goes to all the 80's Glam rock/Arena rock sound that was so popular with bands like Bon Jovi, Twisted Sister and in more recent times Steel Panther, this song in particular i had a steel panther vibe in mind when writing it because for being a comedy band they have no right to be anywhere near as good as they are. Here's one song that i feel has a lot of the feel I was going for with Fast Lane, "Let me Come in".

First step was finding out what makes that 80's guitars sound so big. So after some research it was deduced that all you have to do is crank a Marshall amp and cab and stick a SM57 Dynamic mic in front of one of the speakers. Well, that's it thanks for coming to my TED Talk on 80's guitar.

Not really obviously the placement on the cab is also vitally important for getting a good sound, If you place the microphone too close to the center of the speaker you risk running into the proximity effect and having the bass end of the frequency spectrum far louder than anything else and rendering the sound not what you want it to be. After a little bit of experimentation with where to place the mic I ended up placing it around midway between the center and the outside of the speaker pointing straight in as you can see above. This made the proximity effect less of an issue and still provided a warm sound which was preferable as nearer the outside of the speaker gave a harsher tone. I mean these are all subjective terms you may prefer a little further in or a little further out. Make sure to experiment and don't take my word for it.

All you eagle eyed folks out there may have noticed that there is actually a second mic in there as well, and if you didn't, well here's a link to google maps to find an optician near you. So the additional mic was my attempt to modify the sound a little bit to my liking. I used a Fathead ribbon microphone in the same position as the SM57 just on the other side of the same speaker. The characteristics of the ribbon mic gave me a warmer sound which when mixed in with the harsher sound of the SM57 gave me a happy middle ground. Also out of shot is a "room" mic - Large Diaphragm Condenser (AKG C414) - a meter or so back from the cab which when mixed in certainly seemed to give a "crunch" to the sound. Note that there wasn't much of that mic at all in the final mix but just enough to make a difference so if you want to skip that step because of time or lack of equipment etc. It will not impact you very much.

Also a small tip/trick that was bestowed upon me while doing this project that in order to make sure there are no phase issues between the two close mics. Put the sound through your headphones and turn the amp up so you hear that all too familiar amp hum, proceed to maneuver the ribbon microphone with the phase flipped until the hum goes away in your headphones and then the microphones are perfectly in phase. Unflip the phase and bang, you got two perfectly n phase microphones. Now i didn't have the time to attempt this as i was being chucked out of the studio space in an hour or so but i'm told it works!

Obviously all these tips are well and good for recording in a good sound but the sound has to be good in the first place. None of this "I'll fix it in the mix" stuff, honestly there are no more dangerous words in a producers lexicon. Except maybe "one drink couldn't hurt" but that's probably a lot more universal. To get a rough idea of the setting to use to emulate the sound i had would be below. The guitar was a Fender Stratocaster on the lead pickup.

After recording multiple takes and was reasonably happy with the result (i'm a perfectionist so i'll never be truly satisfied) and about 20 takes of the solo this was the final result. You only need to listen to the first part to get an idea of the guitar sound but if you want to keep listening feel free. It's not a bad tune if i do say so myself