My guitar tone sounds too nasally. Could it be the 57?

[Evenyre]

Howdy, Slutz.

I'm getting a getting very nasally metal guitar tone and do not know what to do. When standing in front of my amplifier, everything sounds just dandy - my tone is full and clear, not nasally. I want to capture this tone, and I want to get it sounding right directly through the monitors without resorting to massive EQ cuts and boosts through Pro Tools.

Here is my signal chain: PRS Custom 24 (EMG 81/85 combo) >>> Maxon OD808 >>> Voodoo Modified Bogner Uberschall >>> Bogner Uberkab >>> SM57 on-axis with a Celestion Vintage 30 >>> M-Audio Profire 2626.

Could this be all be a result of a single SM57? Do you think this could be rectified when paired with another mic (perhaps a MD421 or C414)?

Thanks in advance!

[joeydego]

First thing Id do personally is BURN the maxon pedal. A quart of gasoline and a match ought to do it (be sure your outdoors). Well maybe I wouldnt burn it. Id just put it away. there is earth moving gain in that amp, and no way a 4" wide box is adding anything to it. At least thats my experience. However, if your SURE thats the sound you are happy with and it sounds good, try micing the same speaker with an additional dynamic mic off axis, with the 57 on axis. Check for phase.

[Saxon-of-a-son]

I have always thought the SM57 was nasally. Some people like that. I hate it. Instead of eq'ing the shit out of a 57, or adjusting the amp eq to compensate, I just use less-nasally mics. Angle the 57 if you want more nose in your nasally tone.

The PR-30 is very flat and not at all nasally. (That's what you need, dude!) The e906 is very fast and not nasally.

Another nasally one is the MD441. Both it and the 57 sound like you just switched to the neck pickup. (Slight exaggeration.) I hate hate hate that.

[joeydego]

609 is a decent budget mic that sounds a bit more "metal" than a 57 will get. So many other factors though. I do want that 906 in the stable though.

[Track 7]

Move the mic away from the cone toward the edge of the speaker and angle it 45 degrees pointing toward the cone of the speaker. Cut the gain in half and use it even though it does not sound as "heavy"...
eventually get a Heil PR-30.

[Evenyre]

I have the gain on about 3/10, haha.

As for the Maxon, I don't use it to add additional gain, but rather to slam the input stage of the preamp harder (it dramatically tightens up things).

I'll get on that miking technique, Track 7!

Keep everything coming. You guys are a lot of help!

[Yosh!]

Yeah, try moving the mic around first.
You an get many different tones from
the exact same set up and different mic placement.

Even try out a ways, 6" even 2'.
Depending on your room and setup.

If you can, put headphones on and sweep the mic around while someone is playing or holding the end of the instrument cord to get noise and listen to the change in which frequencies are getting picked up.

[spitfire52mm]

E 609 ftw =)

[brian_delizza]

I usually pair a 57 with a R121 and I am happy with it. Rarely have I liked a single 57 on a cabinet. You probably know this already but it having it in the right spot makes a huge difference , sometimes moving it half an inch will give you what you were looking for....

[maxpidge]

only 57's

57's are great!!!

[rty5150]

i personally think the sm57 is pretty honky as a mic. i like the i5 as the main dynamic mic for my guitars so far(may change after i get a sm7b or e906) and a ribbon(fathead).

main question here is: have you tried moving the mic around to get rid of the nasally tone?

i would look into that right off the bat, the hot treble means it is really close to the center of the cone. try bringing it out closer to the edge for more bottom end. maybe just leave it in the same place, but pull it back to soften the top, but not making the low end bigger.

[Unclenny]

Probably not the mic.......57 and 609 are both standards for cab micing, right? I use both....although I'm not a metal guy. Probably a mic position thing.

Could be the pedal. You might consider putting an EQ pedal in front of your Maxon to tailor your sound a bit more.

[joeydego]

Originally Posted by Unclenny

Probably not the mic.......57 and 609 are both standards for cab micing, right? I use both....although I'm not a metal guy. Probably a mic position thing.

Could be the pedal. You might consider putting an EQ pedal in front of your Maxon to tailor your sound a bit more.

no offense, but that would only require an additional quart of gasoline lol! I too think the pedal does the setup a disservice, I just feel ADDING another will accentuate the problem. The OP said it sounded great from the cab, the problem to his ears is the resulting audio. I think he needs to experiment with multiple mics, double and quadruple tracking etc. Kevin Shirley: Kevin Shirley was happy to spill the beans on recording details with Iron Maiden, giving an insight into how he achieves his 'enormo-sound' with volume-to-11 type bands. Guitars, he says, he usually records with a Beyer M201 and a Shure SM57 microphone placed at exactly 90 degree angles from each other, about six inches from the speaker cone. "The Beyer captures the bottom end very accurately and the SM57 gives you great bite. When the diaphragms are at 90 degrees it means that the phase relationship between the two mics is perfect. I will usually run microphones through either a Neve 8069 module (I rented 16 or 24 of them for the Iron Maiden record), or one of my own Grace mic pres. I then ran the guitar signal through a Drawmer 1961 EQ and a UREI 1176 compressor

[rty5150]

yeah, BTW, ditch the maxon. bogner don't need no help...

are you reamping? if not, then you should be. with your rig, price better not be the issue.

[gitarted]

...Pretty much what everyone else has already said.

I wouldn't put anything else between the guitar and the amp.
Using too much gain on the way in usually ends up giving you a nasally or overly buzzy tone.

I usually mic heavy guitars with a Beta56 and a e609, sometimes using a 57 in place of the beta56... you should be able to find a good tone using what you have.

Back off the gain, record multiple tracks and layer them...works much better than using too much saturation up front.

[Unclenny]

Originally Posted by joeydego

no offense, but that would only require an additional quart of gasoline lol!

[Unclenny]

Originally Posted by gitarted

Using too much gain on the way in usually ends up giving you a nasally or overly buzzy tone.

That could be the issue.

Might be sounding good in the room but washing out the 57.

[Aaron Miller]

When standing in front of my amplifier, everything sounds just dandy - my tone is full and clear, not nasally. I want to capture this tone, and I want to get it sounding right directly through the monitors

Besides what the others said about ditching the Maxon and moving the mic, where exactly are you standing when you set the tone on your amp?...because if your ear is not pretty close to where the mic is, then you're not hearing what the mic is. OK, this begs the question: I can't put my ear right up against the speaker at these levels, what do I do?

Well, my ultimate solution for this was monitoring in a different room in real time. I have my Mesa head in the control room right next to where I mix. I run a 15' speaker cable from the head, through the floor, and to the live room where the cab sits. I set up a 57 on a known sweet spot on the cab, then go back to the control room and start dialing in tones on the head, listening only through my monitors. This has the advantage of allowing me to know exactly what is going to disk and being able to make real-time adjustments to the amp. It rarely requires moving the mic. It's so much easier and faster this way.

[cortisol]

Maybe the combination of all the things in the chain is making for this nasal tone you are talking about.

Time to use your ears and take things out of the chain and hear the difference.

One can only guess at what is happening but...

Your pick ups are probably towards the scoopy end of the spectrum so less lower mids and maybe mids. Your pedal is taking out too much bass end. So what is left??? Upper mids and trouser flapping waves of audio making you believe that the SM57 should be picking up the trouser flapping low end!

Do this: take the pedal out of the chain - back the SM57 off so that it is 2-6 inches off the grill cloth. Perhaps reduce the bass eq on the amp a touch and adjust the mids on the amp by auditioning the sound the mic is hearing through sealed back headphones.

And definately make sure that the cab is off the floor.

But you might also be discovering the timbre that your guitar is actually putting out. Remember that the volume of the amp if high will overload your hearing so that you can't hear what things actually sound like. So try dialing in the tones on the amp a little lower and then doing test recordings from that volume and back on up to your usual playing volume.

By the way I think that Uncle Lenny's suggestion of using an eq pedal to tighten the sound was a good one. At least it is adjustable as far as what frequency the tightening begins. Go for some kind of parametric with plenty of headroom.

Peace,
cortisol

[dfarness]

+1 Heil PR-30 thumbsup

[joeydego]

Id really hate to throw this into the mix, but I just went thru this last week. i took out my "dentist guitar" (being only dentists and lawyers can seem to afford them), my 2005 brazilian PRS C22 with the anniversary birds (I figured the birds would make it sound better) and proceeded to start tracking thru my tried and true setup. 20 minutes later, I put it back in its case. Broke out the les paul custom, and instant DOUBLE thick juice coming from the amp. Do you have other guitars at your disposal?

[Saxon-of-a-son]

Originally Posted by Aaron Miller

Besides what the others said about ditching the Maxon and moving the mic, where exactly are you standing when you set the tone on your amp?...because if your ear is not pretty close to where the mic is, then you're not hearing what the mic is. OK, this begs the question: I can't put my ear right up against the speaker at these levels, what do I do?

Well, my ultimate solution for this was monitoring in a different room in real time. I have my Mesa head in the control room right next to where I mix. I run a 15' speaker cable from the head, through the floor, and to the live room where the cab sits. I set up a 57 on a known sweet spot on the cab, then go back to the control room and start dialing in tones on the head, listening only through my monitors. This has the advantage of allowing me to know exactly what is going to disk and being able to make real-time adjustments to the amp. It rarely requires moving the mic. It's so much easier and faster this way.

Xactly!

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by Evenyre

Howdy, Slutz.

I'm getting a getting very nasally metal guitar tone and do not know what to do. When standing in front of my amplifier, everything sounds just dandy - my tone is full and clear, not nasally. I want to capture this tone, and I want to get it sounding right directly through the monitors without resorting to massive EQ cuts and boosts through Pro Tools.

Here is my signal chain: PRS Custom 24 (EMG 81/85 combo) >>> Maxon OD808 >>> Voodoo Modified Bogner Uberschall >>> Bogner Uberkab >>> SM57 on-axis with a Celestion Vintage 30 >>> M-Audio Profire 2626.

Could this be all be a result of a single SM57? Do you think this could be rectified when paired with another mic (perhaps a MD421 or C414)?

Thanks in advance!

Well, I think it's most likely one of two things, or possibly both.

A) You don't know anything about mic placement and are too lazy to experiment. Start with the mic at the edge of the speaker pointing at the center. If that doesn't get it experiment with position. Speakers produce lows at the edge, highs in the middle. With the starting position I suggested you should get a fairly balanced tone, which may or may not be what you want. Experiment both with position relative to the speaker and angle.

B) Your guitar tone actually sucks - for recording. Mics don't pick up sound in quite the same way our ears do. Very often I see guitarists with a tone they think is great that don't sound good at all when mic'ed. How big is your amp? If it's more than, say, 30 watts you should consider picking up something in the 5 to 15 watt range. Also very often you'll find that you don't need as much preamp gain/ overdrive for recording as you might like otherwise. For example I get HUGE sounds out of my itty-bitty Epiphone Valve Junior. A good part of that is due to the fact that I can crank it and get output tube/transformer distortion, which has a very different character than preamp overdrive.

BTW the Epi has no tone control, it just sounds good anyway. I also have a little 15 watt Fender Pro Junior, which is a bit louder and a bit brighter. It does have a tone control. I like it too, but not as much as the Epi.

[5down1up]

if theres to much fizzz and honk i would try to kill the room sound first. thats kinda hard in small rooms with drums but getting a guitar cab isolated just takes some heavy blankets and you should be a lot closer to what your lusting for ?!

doesnt look cool, i know ... but who cares

moving the mic, different spots, angles & distances is what you defenately should check out.

theres a lot of things to know about doing this all, but its obvious that whats coming out of a 4*12 cab is kinda hard to reproduce with some studio speakers. so you need to find out what needs to be done to make it translate well using your setup.

good luck

[teleharmonium]

A 57 can absolutely sound nasal. Celestions in general have a nasal aspect to their basic sound too (although I still love the old ones). If you like the sound in the room and not the sound from the mic, first thing is to move the mic, try backing it off as well as different angles relative to the driver, if that doesn't do the trick the next step is to switch out the mic. After that I'd suggest miking at more distance or using a different cabinet, but a different mic will probably take care of it. A 421 or a black 609 or a 906 would be fine. There are plenty of other good choices too, but if you've got the 421 sitting there, make a move.

[spitfire52mm]

Originally Posted by Evenyre

I have the gain on about 3/10, haha.

As for the Maxon, I don't use it to add additional gain, but rather to slam the input stage of the preamp harder (it dramatically tightens up things).

I think you guys are missing the point about the pedal. I record with Evenyre and he uses the pedal with little to NO gain at all. It's purely used as a volume boost before the tubes.

I'll check out the sound clips about the SM57. I agree that it might be the positioning.

We'll test it with an i5, Sm57, E 609. I'm fairly confident we can get a decent tone with MINIMAL processing in PT (the whole point).

[rty5150]

Originally Posted by spitfire52mm

I think you guys are missing the point about the pedal. I record with Evenyre and he uses the pedal with little to NO gain at all. It's purely used as a volume boost before the tubes.

I'll check out the sound clips about the SM57. I agree that it might be the positioning.

We'll test it with an i5, Sm57, E 609. I'm fairly confident we can get a decent tone with MINIMAL processing in PT (the whole point).

if you got a ribbon, try that, too.

[Evenyre]

Originally Posted by spitfire52mm

I think you guys are missing the point about the pedal. I record with Evenyre and he uses the pedal with little to NO gain at all. It's purely used as a volume boost before the tubes.

I'll check out the sound clips about the SM57. I agree that it might be the positioning.

We'll test it with an i5, Sm57, E 609. I'm fairly confident we can get a decent tone with MINIMAL processing in PT (the whole point).

+1

The Maxon is merely to tighten up things, not to change the tone/voicing or add more gain. I highly recommend one for this purpose only.

Many reknowned metal producers use this pedal during the recording process: Andy Sneap, Adam Dutkiewicz, Jason Suecof, and Ben Shigel.

Anyways, I've tried several different miking positions, and have included an AKG 414 in the signal chain. Things sound great now!

Thanks, guys.

[spitfire52mm]

Originally Posted by John Eppstein

Well, I think it's most likely one of two things, or possibly both.

A) You don't know anything about mic placement and are too lazy to experiment.

B) Your guitar tone actually sucks - for recording.

Can't be point A. He knows plenty about mic placement and has had tons of success before. He's certainly not lazy because he's spent some time with it. I think he just hasn't found either the right placement or it might be the room/guitar tone.

I'll know all about point B. I have an Orange AD30 head and there are times when it doesn't cut it for recording a particular sound so I go to a different amp! Just because it sounds golden live doesn't mean it'll be great for a particular tone in the studio.

[Mesa4x12er]

Originally Posted by joeydego

no offense, but that would only require an additional quart of gasoline lol! I too think the pedal does the setup a disservice, I just feel ADDING another will accentuate the problem.

You seem to be missing the point of the OD pedal. He is not using it for gain. He is getting some nice low end roll off and hitting his preamp tubes harder. This makes it possible to roll back the amp gain while increasing tightness and punch.

BTW OP when I had my Uberschall I always used an OD pedal, but my favorite was the OCD.