The Gothenburg sound

There are great Swedish Melodic death metal bands, and possibly many of the forum users are aware of what the so called "Gothenburg sound" is. Pioneer bands of this sound such as In flames, At the gates, Dark tranquillty are between my personal favorites. And Studio Fredman is guilty for it. So much that their method of miking guitar cabs is referred as the "Fredman miking technique".

So this topic pretends to be an approach on how to "reproduce" the Fredman miking technique in the digital world, and that would be using guitar cab impulses. Guitarhacks are the way to go.

According to some topic related to this infamous sound on Andy Sneap's forum, the Fredman miking technique requires 2 shure sm57 mics, one mic is placed on axis straight to the edge, and the second mic is placed off axis, at the same distance as the other mic, but with an angle of 45°.

This image may ilustrate it better.



Both mics will form something like an "arrow" in front of the guitar cab.

The basic idea is to use the 45° off axis mic, as the main source of the guitar tone, and blend the on axis mic by slowly sliding the fader until you find the sweet spot.

You can try to simulate this approach with impulses. With guitarhacks I like to use the "Guitarhack JJ FRED45-1" impulse as the main source. And you can double track your guitar track or just duplicate it, and blend it with the "GuitarHack JJ EDGE-1" impulse. This last one is the one you will blend to taste.

I like the 1" away impulses to reduce the proximity effect, and is most likely you will need multiband compression on a guitar group to tame the low end.

This is just a virtual world simulation of this miking technique. For further references you can check the topic on the In flames "Clayman" sound on Andy's forum.

Hope this will help some players to achieve a better guitar tone with their impulses.

Any corrections, comments, will be welcomed. I'm not a pro or anything like that, and don't really know how accurate this approach may be to the real thing. But I'm sure something good can come out of this.

Cheers!

Nice post mate
I'll upload it to the site when i have access , cause i am not on my pc now

Done. You are on the list xD
And sticky

http://mixingtips.org/crbst_1.html

Sender wrote:

Done. You are on the list xD
And sticky

http://mixingtips.org/crbst_1.html

More cheers!

+1 Rep from me Awesome tutorial Wolfshade.

J3FFR3Y2692 wrote:

+1 Rep from me Awesome tutorial Wolfshade.

Thanks a lot man!

This is what this community is all about... if you know something cool, why not share it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-6nvd0_l-Q

jokull wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-6nvd0_l-Q

Hell yeah!

A Multi-mic setup works really great for recording guitar cabs. The advantage of commercial impulses is that you can simulate that approach, since they offer impulses for different cabs, with different mics, positions, distances.

You can also use the Recabinet impulse pack for this. Recabinet Impulse Pack contains "Edge45" impulses which you can then blend with "Edge" position impulses to get this great sound that Wolfshade posted above.

So what you would need if your actually mic'ing a cab to get this tone is:
1x 5150 amp head (NOT 5150II/6505+ or combo)
1x 4X12 V30 Cabinet ENGL Pro
2x SM57 ( Shure dynamic mic's)
4X Rhythm Tracks ( Separate takes, panned 100%L, 80%L, 80%R, 100%R)
1X Bass Track (pretty much essential to get any good guitar tone)

I am pretty sure there is at least one impulse out there that is a blend between both these impulses to recreate this awesome tone. If I find one, i'll let you guys know.

Another photo of the mic setup:

Nice post J3FFR3Y2692

That's just everything you need in the "real" world to achieve this particular tone.

I'm eager to try Recabinet, I downloaded the Demo a few months ago, but decided to wait until the release of Recabinet 3.0 (which is on it's way) to purshase it.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13376148/KRANK.mp3