Artist looking to begin recording.

Freebase Dali · 09-27-2009, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Musicophile

I pretty much second the audio interface approach above, but regards microphones I'm gonna have to disagree (sorry freebase). If you're just putting together a basic home rig, I'd just get one decent large diaphragm condensor microphone, and forget about getting a dynamic mic.

Spend the extra money on a Condensor. Condensors can be more delicate, so don't crank your guitar amp and put it against the grille. Six inches to a foot or so should be fine so long as you're not turning it up until the windows rattle.

Dynamic mics can handle much higher sound pressure levels, so they're used for close-mic'ing snare drums and loud guitar amplifiers. The thing most people don't realise is that to get the full frequency range out of the microphone you have to have it loud. Real loud. If you don't, you don't get a very good high frequency response, so the resulting recording always sounds dull.

Condensor microphones capture a much more accurate, detailed 'picture' of the sound, and are much better at low volumes, and they can handle much higher volumes than people expect. So most home recordists are better served by condensor microphones. Spend more than $69 dollars too.

Guitar amplifiers sound far better and articulate both the guitar and the amp's characteristics at higher volumes. That much isn't up for debate.
That said, using a condenser is not a fantastic idea.

The problem when recording electric guitar with a condenser (and I've done it before) is the pickup pattern on the condenser and its tendency to catch a lot of the room acoustics.
That may be a desirable quality if you're going for that specific effect and you have a great sounding room, I.E. recording a solo acoustic guitar, but if not, the recording is going to be problematic specifically in the mixing stage in respect to element isolation and frequency occupation. If you're recording all your instruments with a condenser, you're going to have a very mushy sounding mix.

While a dynamic microphone may not have as wide of a frequency response as a condenser, any person with experience mixing knows that guitars generally get a lot of the low frequencies hi-passed, and get some cut in the highs. It's a standard example of creating a frequency space for each element to "live" in. Mixing 101.
So unless it's just a solo guitar in the mix, no knowledgeable mixing engineer is going leave a wide freq response all the way from 30hz to 20k...

Dynamic microphones are excellent in facilitating the DESIRED qualities of high spl instrument sources.
It's quite possibly the reason they're called instrument microphones and why they're by far the standard for recording electric guitar, bass, and drums, across the board in any professional recording studio.

By the way, I can vouch for the MXL 990. I own one. As far as the two alternate dynamics, he's going to have to test it on his own if he decides to get them. But the SM57's, I own 6 of them and I can vouch for them as well.
I've been recording and mixing since 99', so I'm pretty confident that my advice isn't misinforming the gentleman who's asking.