How to record an electric guitar and amplifier

Guitars are often recorded in recording studios but you can also record them at home, in any event the techniques used for the recording are very similar. An explanation of the basics follows.

Recording electric guitars is a very enjoyable sound engineering task and one that can be very satisfying. In the first instance it is suggested that the strings on the guitar are changed a few days or a week before the recording this will ensure that the performance of the strings is not in anyway diminished and should make it nicer to play for the guitarist. In general it is a good plan to place 3 mics on a guitar cabinet. There are a few dynamic mics that have been indelibly associated with guitar amplifier recording. That is the SM57 and  the MD421, specifics on these mics can be found online. Many great electric guitar recordings have been made with just these 2 microphones. However this is not to suggest that other dynamic microphones can be used with pleasing results. In fact it can be fun to try out expensive and budget dynamic mics for fun and experimentation in order to see how they sound. 

I would try this only once you have some mics you know and love already capturing a decent sound. Dynamic mics can quite safely be close to the speaker grill unless you have a  very high volume amplifier playing. Let the guitarist selected their tone and place the mics close to the grill, 2cms from the front should be fine. Depending on where you put the microphone you will obtain a different tone. Try moving it from the center of the cone to the edge of the cone and you will hear that there will be a difference in tone from the speaker and mic combination.Some engineers also like to place a large diaphragm microphone close to the guitar cabinet. 

For this techniques an LDC mic with a pad switch would be a good idea. The idea of multi miking a cabinet is so you can mix and blend the mics and also pan them in the mix to obtain a different sound by blending the mics together and some pseudo stereo spread if you are not double tracking. If you are double tracking you may wish to alter the mic position a little for the second take to add some variation in the tone of the doubled tracked takes. This sounds great when you pan the guitars and you get a thick stereophonic spread across the speakers. In some instances this can sound too good and it can eat up a lot of the audio spectrum.

It can be surprising how much bass can emanate from a guitar amplifier so you may wish to use filters wisely to ensure that the sound works well in the mix. Distorted guitar amplifiers have their own in built compression from the valve saturation but you may wish to add some dynamic control to less over driven sounds. When recording guitars always try and minimize guitar buzz and noise by ensuring that the volume control is well up on the guitar and that the amps gain structure is set up correctly. Always use good quality leads from the guitar to the amplifier as there can be quite an improvement from using a high quality lead for you guitar.