What’s the best kind of microphone for recording electric guitar? On first glance, this seems like a straightforward question, but dig in a bit and notice the layers of sedimentation. The pat answer is that you position a Shure SM57 or other dynamic mic on the grill cloth, pointed on or near the speaker cone. Other engineers will warn you against oversimplified questions and insist that only the blend of a dynamic and a ribbon mic will do the job. Still, others will add a condenser mic for a more complicated marriage, and this is just scratching the surface of the workarounds employed to get electric guitar tracks to “translate.” Each mic has something unique to offer but is also accompanied by various shortcomings. In response to this conundrum, Roswell Pro Audio set out to build one mic that exhibits the best qualities of all three. The result is the Cab Mic, a condenser microphone “voiced like a ribbon, with the punch of a dynamic and clarity of a condenser.” If you’re looking to get great sound while simultaneously simplifying how you mic a guitar cabinet, this is the mic for you. In other words, the answer to my initial question needs an update!
Beginning engineers will endlessly debate drum mic placement but assume they’ve got guitars covered. When I bought my first 4-track cassette recorder in the late ’90s, I had an SM57 from singing in a postpunk band and stuck it inches from the cone of one of the speakers in my Marshall 4x12 cab, as I’d seen countless other engineers do. I could do that! When I listened back to what I’d recorded, it sounded inexplicably muddy and thin at the same time and nothing close to what I heard in the room. Over the years, I learned to adjust EQ, mic placement, sound panels, volume, and more to get better results. The real breakthrough came when I switched to a multiple-mic approach, but combining more mics on the same source means running the risk of phase issues and maybe a weaker sound because of comb filtering. Committing to the Cab Mic alone means you don’t have to mess with phase issues later, nor do you need to chase the perfect blend of multiple mics during a mix.
I was eager to push the limits of the Cab Mic in my home studio, waiting patiently for everyone to leave before I cranked my amp to 11. Playing my ’90s Japanese Fender Jazzmaster with a Widerange Humbucker neck pickup from Curtis Novak, I first tried some rhythmic strumming through a cranked 1x12 Fender Blues Junior, my typical setup. As someone who had settled on a three-mic approach to capturing cabs, I was impressed. The sound was fuller than any single microphone, yet also more nuanced. It was less muddy than a dynamic (I compared the Cab Mic to a vintage Sennheiser MD 421 in addition to an SM57), far less shrill than a typical condenser, but more full-bodied than a ribbon. I was surprised to hear the Cab Mic as neutral across so much of the frequency spectrum, so I pulled up a graphic representation via FabFilter’s Pro-Q 3 plug-in [Tape Op #132] to see if it matched what I was hearing. The Cab Mic track sat within a 3 dB range from 100 Hz to 5 kHz, whereas the ribbon lopped off frequencies on either end and was not as smooth. Additionally, the Cab Mic sounded faster and more responsive to dynamics than other mics – it felt more lively, exciting, and nuanced than what I had grown used to.
Because of its ribbon-like voicing, Roswell recommends placing the Cab Mic six inches back and directly on-axis with the cone of the speaker – no need to find a good balance between on- and off-axis placement. If you’ve employed condenser mics on guitar cabs, you’re probably anticipating two problems: 1) The amp will be too loud for the mic. 2) The result will be far too bright. While the Cab Mic is a condenser, a bright one it is not. Roswell voiced the Cab Mic for this task, and it shows. Since it is designed for guitar cabs, it can handle ridiculously high SPLs. I couldn’t get it to break up in front of a cranked 2x12 Fender Twin Reverb amp. I tried clean tones, piles of distortion, and everything in between, and it was always articulate, capturing the sound of the speaker. I wasn’t even tempted to EQ these tracks; a far cry from the contortions required by a dynamic mic.
Guitarists are notoriously picky about tone. They will welcome the Cab Mic’s accuracy and ease of use. Provided you have the other basics covered, the Cab Mic would be a great addition to any collection, especially if you record guitar-centered music. I should sound one note of caution, though: Cab Mic is not an all-around studio staple that would be equally good on vocals or acoustic instruments. It’s too specialized in design to do it all, but – as a worthwhile tradeoff – it records guitar cabs better than any other mic I’ve encountered. Its voicing also means it would be great for brass (though I wasn’t able to test this), and it shines as a drum room mic as well, capturing the shells over the cymbals. I couldn’t believe how well the kick came across, for instance.
When we set up this mic review, Matt McGlynn of Roswell wrote to say that the first run of Cab Mics was an unexpected success and had sold out, but that they would build a new one for me to test. I imagined waiting months, if not years, for a mic to make its way to me across the Pacific Ocean in a giant freighter. However, like all Roswell mics, the Cab Mic is hand-built, tuned, and tested (with a 24-hour burn-in period) in Northern California. It arrived at my doorstep within days. Like the Roswell Mini K87 [Tape Op #137] and Mini K67x [#161], the Cab Mic is smaller and lighter than most condensers, making placement easy in tight spaces and saving the need to unearth a robust mic stand for the job. It includes a hard stand mount and a microfleece mic pouch. At a fraction of the cost of a good ribbon mic, let alone a condenser, ribbon, and dynamic mic combo, the Cab Mic is a great deal. But regardless of price, it’s also my new favorite for recording guitar amps. How we record amps hasn’t altered much since the 1960s, but I think that’s about to change.