Guitar In The Church, 11: Finding The Right Amplifier/Microphone Combo, by Mike Cosper

In today’s churches, the guitar is coming to dominate the landscape in the same way that the piano and organ once did. It’s important that as church musicians we give great care and thought to our guitar playing – everything from chord voicings to tones – so that the instrument is a servant of the congregation, not the star and not the distraction. Each week on Sojournmusic.com, Pastor Mike Cosper posts a guitarist’s feature, ranging from articles to links, online lessons and interviews.  Here, he discusses guitar tone, amps and mics:

Guitar tone is a strange animal. Like any sound, it changes and develops in a space. One end of the room will have a certain sound while another end will sound completely different. The physics of a room – the way a signal bounces off of walls, rafters, and people – shapes a sound just like a prism shapes light.

The result of this is that the guitar tone you hear on stage, in front of your amplifier, is not the sound someone hears 10, 20 or 30 feet away. High end gets harsh or low end gets boomy – who knows.

If that weren’t enough, we then stick a microphone two inches from the speaker cone and hope that what ends up at the soundboard sounds like what we hear 10 feet from our amp. Making careful decisions about microphone choice and placement are good steps to accomplishing this goal. Making the right decision means that the PA is putting out a sound around the room that echoes and imitates what we’re getting from our amp, and helps to fight the decay of sound that happens in a big room.

For a sense of how complex those decisions can get, check out “Milking Rock Guitar Live” from mixonline.com.

It may be worth considering investing in a few microphones for your church. Just like guitar/amp pairings are important, pairing the right microphone with an amp is an important decision. While an SM57 is a great go-to mic for bright amps like Fender and Music Man, it won’t be able to get all the harmonic complexities from a Matchless or Bad Cat – you may be better suited to use a Sennheiser 421 or a condensor mic with some beef. (I like the AKG C-1000 for these rich amps – it captures the low end and low mid depth, though you have to roll the high end back at the board.) The Audix I-5 is a good mic with a different flavor than a 57 – a little more openness on the top end – and it does a great job of rejecting other stage noise. As the article above demonstrates, sometimes one microphone isn’t an adequate solution. Some sounds will need two or three signals mixed together to capture all the nuances of a tone.

Of course, most of us are not working on six-digit sound design budgets, and most of us aren’t running Pro Tools live either. For us, we’re wise to beg, borrow or steal a few options to test out with our guitar rigs. A word to the wise – if you find that an odd mic like a 421 or a C-1000 or some funky ribbon has the right mojo with your rig, then you should buy one and bring it with you like you would a pedal. You care much more than the average sound guy how your rig sounds, and if it’s an odd mic, you’ll probably find that most places don’t have one readily available. When I was traveling with a Bad Cat, I would stick a C-1000 in the cabinet, knowing that it liked that amp so much. Now that I’m mostly playing vintage Fenders again, a 57 is treating me just fine, though pairing it with a C-1000 does some nice things to the ambient sounds I create.

See Articles One Through Ten in “Guitar In The Church”

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