General Music Chat

Hey Gang,

A buddy came over to record some tracks to demo his newly built Tele and brought a Fender tweed amp. I used a MXL 601s small diaphram condensor to mic the amp and when we started the amp sound KILLER and it was trackin great!NOW, after he got warmed up and we decided to go for KEEPS of these tracks, we started gettin some distortion on play back ,even at low DB levels when there was hardly any sound pressure attacking the mic..As the amp warmed up, we lost our sound BUT, keep in mind all the while , we NEVER heard ANY distortion coming from the amp itself during the input signal recording the tracks.
I recorded an acoustic gtr during the process and beat the daylites out of it putting the signal LEDS in the red and NO distortion on play back...Like I say , the playback was distorting at levels -9 thru -12 very low DB..It was kind of a "fuzz".We switched over to a 57 and had NO problem BUT, could not get the sound we wanted from it.Anyway , any idea what happened to this MIC? We had it the same distance from the amp , same input gain, etc..Nothing changed from the beginning to which we had no problem?..Do condersor mics build up some kinda "electrical field" while micing an amp? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks,
John

Does the MXL need phantom power? I know the 58 doesn't and if the MXL does that might be a place to start looking.

Well YEAH Im an old bastard BUT not THAT old. Yeah, I wondered about whether the PP box was delivering the proper amount of voltage OR whether the MIC itself was taking in the steady amount needed. I just got through doing a BUNCH of vocal tracks usin that box with no prob.Like I say, Everything was great for the first 20min of recording while we were dailin in his tone on the amp.Man , thats a clean amp! BUT, when the tubes got hot ,she startin soundin kinda "Middy" and couldnt get the low mids to behave. BUT, not at anytime did that amp "distort".
Thanks for responding though man

Just a guess, but did you try grounding the amp directly to the mic? (ground-loops, ya-know).. Your field build-up theory may have some validity..
A condensor mic (iirc) is like a capacitor and a tube amp has ~700VDC bus running thru it..

Oh NO, I gotta go back to 76 and hit the books on my RLC circuit, Kershoffs voltage law, and the dreaded OHMS LAW.. (remember the resistor color code ?.Yeah man , that is the only thing at this point that is making any sense. I even THOUGHT it might be stactic electricity but the humadiddy was too high and my hair was laying down..
Im gonna do some experiments tonite with my gtr and this lil Gorilla amp.

Thanks,
John

Yep, hit the books.. Resistor color code- Black Bart Rapes Only Young G... n/m..
Hey- you gonna come to the Roanoke Jam, Dude? It's in a few months..
It's at the "Meet & Greet" thread..

I KNEW you were gonna recite that back to me.. black , brown , red, etc.YEP, back then I thought , now if I can just whip this electronics thing and get my TV and radio built , this will be all the knowledge I need to succeed being a musishen, fixing amps, wirin PA's,CB's TV's etc. Then Bill G came along in 81 took a dump in my play house.. BUT, Ill tell ya, I just did an experiment with my amp and gtr and the same thing happened. I cant explain why we got by with it for 20 min????..SO, do NOT mic an amp using this mic. You can beat an acoustic to death with no distortion but it doesnt seem to handle the SPL of a speaker at about the same DB level??? WEIRD?..Oh well, that will give me an excuse to find out about these 120 plug ins I have...

Ok, glad you got it figured out, John ..
So you're coming to the Roanoke Jam-fest, no?

Man, I went to the net lookin for "Roanoke fest" and theres about 5-6 fests that would fit in the category..THEN , I figured out that this "meet and greet" was on the US forum.. ..I used to go there when it first came out but it was NEVER active so I quit..THEN, I looked on ALL 5 pages but couldnt find any concrete info about it..send me a direct link with some info in ya can so Ill know where , when , how , why and which..

John

Kidd,

Ive always used the tried and true SM 57 shoved in the grill of an amp, live and for recording.

My Avlex condensor does the same thing you described, you are just over loading the diaphragm of the mic is my guess.

Occasionally I close mic with an SM 57 and then set a condensor mic around 10 to 20 feet from the amp for room ambience.

Theres a reason all the pros use the SM 57, it just works for guitar!

I have always used the SM57 my saying has always been with Shure you are sure, until I found the Sennheiser Evolution Series Silver 609 large diaphragm guitar amp. mike. This mike replicates the sound coming out of my amp better than any mike I have ever used and it is front loaded so you can hang it from the mike cable over your speaker off axis and eliminate the need for a stand and it only cost a few dollars more than an SM57 around $100.00. (I should add that it is only good for close proximity miking live, and for low budget recording purposes. you would want to use a good condenser mike for room ambient miking)

Hey Guys thanks for the responses .Well ya know, I have ALWAYS , I mean ALWAYS now dammit, swore by usin a 57, BUT ...Now hear me out , dont change the channel, we were going for a VERY CLEAN tele (country genred) tone and we DID TRY a 57 but this lil condensor was so much cleaner and provided a much truer tone replica of the amp model. I gotta 57 on that lil gorilla right now and Im happy with its repo of the raw amp distortion I get. Yeah, this was something Ive never done this and this guy had been to a big studio that was 24/96 and HE had heard that tele recorded with Acid PRO and a million dollor sound card with excellent AD/DA converters..I said HEY! in HERE , MY studio,where we use a 20 yr old sound card and software and a BRAIN for an interface, we go back to 75 with my repo not soundin that much better than a 45.. ..This is NOT something Ill be doing much of so I prolly wont be buyin a amp mic anytime soon but thanks for the info on the SESS 609.

John

John- yeh, it's the "meet-and-greet" thread. Nothing concrete yet, still in the planning phase, it'll be a few months from now. Just making a list of who's gonna be there.

Yeah , I went to one of these in Chicago back in 02. It was a BG event so it was all acoustic and much easier to manage.All the like minded hungout with eachother , formed their own bands, and it turned out to be a blast. Yeah, everyone got a chance to perform. Yeah, If I can know about it far enough in advance, Ill participate!...Getcher ass back up here PALEOPETE..