Today I decided to do some recording tests. I have a Fender Bassbreaker 15, which is a killer amp, except for one thing: it has a small cabinet. It’s roughly the size of a Fender Blues Junior, which you’ll find in the dictionary under “boxy sounding amps.” And also like the Blues Junior, connecting the Bassbreaker 15 to a better cabinet yields better sound. But what about for recording?
I’ve tried a lot of different mics when recording guitar cabs, and I always come back to the Shure SM57. It simply gives you the best sound. There’s a reason it’s the industry standard. I’ve also tried to pair up the SM57 with some various wide diaphragm condenser mics, but I always end up with just the SM57.
So today I put the SM57 in front of two different speakers: the Celestion V-Type G12 (12 inch) in the Bassbreaker 15 cabinet, and the Celestion Vintage 30 (12 inch) in an Orange cabinet. The Orange cab is probably 20% bigger, and it sounds amazing. When I’m just playing guitar, I always play through the Orange because it sounds a whole lot mo betta.
I recorded a Fender Strat with Texas Special pickups through the Bassbreaker 15 with the gain set to 5 and the gain toggle set to the middle position. In other words, a nice crunch sound. And while the Orange cab had some low end I had to EQ out of the track, the mids and highs were sweet and clear. By contrast, the mids and highs on the G12 had an element of harshness to them that sounded unpleasantly “spiky.” The Vintage 30 kick its ass, period.
So there you go. If you want a good crunchy rock sound, take a note from the past – go with a good tube amp, a decent sized cabinet with a Vintage 30 12 inch speaker, and mic it up with a Shure SM57. I sort of already knew this, but it’s always good to run your own tests and learn things for yourself.
