Going direct. Not a bad way to go if you are looking for a clean, undistorted tone. What this means is simply that you plug your guitar directly into tape unit and play away. For those guitarists who revel in effects, you can also plug into an effects board and then direct to the tape unit or mixer. Not a great idea though if you are going through an effects pedal like a Tube Screamer. Try it though if you want. You may hit a sound you like. No rules here, as always when it comes to recording. Experiment is the only law here.
Miking the speaker. Sounds simple, but you have many choices here. A common approach is to just place your mike four inches in front of the speaker, directed at the center, and then wail away. This works, but let’s take another angle (no pun intended). First, is your speaker sitting on the ground? Get it up. I mean it. Set it on a chair, crate, or something. The tone is much more accurate if the speaker’s cabinet isn’t sitting on the floor. Next, let’s locate the amp’s strong spot. How do you do this? Easy. Turn your guitar’s volume way down (essentially off), and move the mike around the amp while it’s live. Do this with headphones on of course. Locate the spot where the hiss happens to be the strongest. That’s your spot. Now turn up your guitar and start shredding. Some guitarists make every attempt to get away from the hiss and that’s fine. It all depends on what sound you are trying to get.
I’ve also known guitar players to place a blanket over the amp and the mike when recording to eliminate any unwanted sounds from the room they are recording in. That leads us to another approach, and that is....
Miking the room. What this means is that you place your mike anywhere in the room you want to in order to capture the room’s character in relation to the amp. Now, if you have a noisy furnace nearby (for basement recording) you may want to avoid this method unless your song is called “Insistent Furnace” or something. A great way of doing this to add depth to your recording is to use two mikes. One placed near the speaker as explored above, along with a second mike set back somewhere in the room a few feet away. Of course you end up with the guitar on two tracks this way but you can either leave it that way and pan them apart (for a more spatial sound), or you can combine them onto one track for a deeper sound.
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