By Mark Grove
I know a number of you thought Bob Dylan was going to be the centerpiece of this next article, but low and behold the fascinating topic of amp placement is on our agenda again.
I received a lot of comments from members of the Guitar Player forums on this subject. Unless you have a thick skin and can take a lot of criticism, the forums are not the best place to be. But let's get back to the topic at hand. Dee Curtis and I talked about amp placement and the actual importance of it.
I figure if Slash had something profound and something we personally found right on the money, we should use that info. Not because of who he is, but what he said in one paragraph, that's it. It was an article in Guitar World on amp placement from this year.
Now, I tend to think I'm right a lot of the time which is how I think anyway. Or as a friend put it, Dr. Phil. What I talked about in the earlier article was how mic placement played a part in your eventual sound along with amp placement. Or should I be saying cabinet placement?
Doesn't really matter. I did a survey on the forum and found I was really able to really whip up a firestorm of controversy on this subject and others.
Alright, I'm just going by what I thought was relevant to the topic and what Dee and I discussed on the topic of amp placement. This includes comments I thought were right on the money. One was that keeping an amp in a corner or close to a wall, tended to give off more lower end--and depending on how you had your mic placed and amp set up, gave off either a great tone or an offending one.
You have to experiment with this.
I agreed with that assumption for the most part being that a blues bass player I know tended to crank his 300 Watt amp placed near a wall--and when he played grittier or more bass laden blues/rock, it gave off a tone worse than a heavy metal heart punch, if you know what I mean!
What was bandied about as well was the ambient aspect of mic placement being more important in conjunction with the way your amp is placed. If you watch any recordings of Jimmy Page in studio you'll find he experimented like a "Banshee" with this, and it became apparent that mic and amp placement had more of an effect than having all the top gear in the world.
But I would say that having an amp placed away from a wall or corner and miking it off-axis a bit can give you either good or bad tone. It depends on the type of music you play as well. There are a shitload of variables, but you want to keep it simple and don't include all kinds of EQ'ing everything to death.
Including a bunch of filler sounds just to mask offending ones, and not letting the right sounds bleed through can also play havoc with all this. Also, a good way to check your sound and see if the right amp and mic placement is working is to have someone listen to the band from the crowd's perspective in front of the stage, and record your gigs and practices as well.
This will give you even more insight into not just how you're playing, but if your amp and mic placement is really working.
In an earlier article Robben Ford, a great guitarist said he was having issues with his tone for long periods of time, and some nights felt he shouldn't be on stage. That could be his amps placement or the way he set up his amp. Who knows.
All I can say is be ready to experiment and keep it simple. Frustration will part and parcel of creating your bands sound and getting it right.
Mark Grove
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