Third Take

I previously mentioned the trick of getting a guitar amp off the floor to minimize the early reflections the microphone “hears” and tighten up the bottom end. As I said in that article, it’s something to try but not a hard and fast rule.

I recently did two recordings of the same amp, same guitar, and same player with the same microphone and preamp. The only difference was whether the amp was on a stand or not. I managed to get good sounds out of both positions, but with the amp on the floor I got that sound much faster with less tweaking of amp settings and microphone placement.

On the stand, I spent considerable time trying to get more bottom and fighting the high end. When the amp was on the floor, it was almost as easy as sticking a microphone in front of it and pressing record.

Looking back at all the electric guitar sounds I’ve recorded in the last year, all of the really great ones were amps on the floor. I think that will be my default position from now on, and I’ll only move it on to a stand if I can’t get the floor to work.