Tone Report Weekly Issue 114 | Page 29

Recording an electric guitar is pretty straightforward , at least by the standards of most audio engineers. It doesn’t normally require a lot of fancy microphones, and unlike some acoustic instruments, it’s easy to tell where most of the sound is coming from, making mic placement relatively simple. It can certainly be made more complicated (and often is) but achieving a good electric guitar recording can be as simple as one serviceable, inexpensive microphone pointed somewhere near the middle of one’s favorite speaker.  Despite the ease with which a respectable guitar sound can be captured, guitarists themselves often find the process of recording frustrating and ultimately disappointing, especially if it’s their first studio experience or they’re going the DIY route. The source of this disappointment invariably comes down to the difference between the sound they hear in their heads and the sound that they hear on the control room monitors. Rocking out in the live room in front of a cranked amp, you might think your tone is perfectly dialed in, but when listening to playback you find that the recorded tone sounds nothing like what you expected. What happened? ToneReport.com 29