Recording Electric Guitar Dual Mic - Stereo/ Mono question

Cubase
#1

Hi Folks,

I am getting to grips with Cubase 8 and trying to get a decent electric guitar sound recorded . I was playing around with a 2 mic setup yesterday evening into my Focusrite 18i20 . With my 2 mics (1 SM57 pointing at speaker and 1 Sennheiser e609 around 1500cm in front of cab) the Focusrite unit gives me the option to record in Stereo into a single Cubase stereo audio track. I played around with the panning and to be honest it sounds pretty good.

The other option I have is to record both mics to a Mono audio track or I can record both mics to two separate mono tracks . When I tested this , I was not as happy with the result but it was getting late so I didn’t experiment too much . I had a feeling the issue may have been with phasing .

I guess I am looking for some advice or feedback here from users with experience using a single or dual mic setup recording mainly lead guitar parts .

Is it better to record in stereo when using 2 mics or should I be recording everything in mono seeing as the guitar itself is a mono instrument by nature ?

How does this impact on adding delay or modulation then to the record parts stereo v mono ?

Thanks a million
Martin

#2

I would record to two mono tracks, and then you have the flexibility to do whatever you want with the tracks after the fact. Keep them as mono tracks, pan them hard left and right (or anything in between)…Whatever.

#3

Thanks for that . That’s kind of what I was thinking myself , having both mono tracks gives you more flexibility I guess.

I’ll play around with it some more tomorrow when I have more time.

#4

2 x mono = you can manipulate delay between the tracks (phase correlations etc.) instantly, use different EQs for both or whatever comes to mind…

1 x stereo = much better if you are going to warp the track - the phase correlation on the stereo interleaved file will stay intact, but it will also be harder to manipulate (let’s say you want to shift your 1,5 m mic into the ‘past’/timeline left, you’d have to insert a plugin, change plugin routing to mono and delay the close mic instead).

I prefer different tracks for easier handling. If edits are necessary, I just cut/slide/crossfade. On very rare occassions when warping works better than cutting (i.e. picked acoustic guitars with sustained notes) I’ll go stereo (or LCR up to 5.1 depending on how many mics are involved). Which is a hassle as well to make the proper routings to make a multitrack recording an interleaved file with more than 2 tracks.

#5

As above. For convenience when tracking, I put both tracks (or more if I’m using more mics) into a folder track and group them using =. That way I can move them around, edit, and compare takes as if it’s one track.

#6

Thanks for all the replies - much appreciated !