Recording a leslie guitar amp

Never did that before, so I used a SM57 angled 90 degrees to the amp's case  pointed towards te side of the rotor, very close.

The "ups and downs" in volume seem to be a bit to strong this way.



Thoughts are very welcome :-)

5 feet away would give me sort of the room? I got the room, but it also has drums and bass on it.

Maybe I can "smooth" the leslie out using a compressor?

First, back the mic up. Get it about 2-3' away at a minimum. Close-miking is fine for live stage amplification, but for recording that just blows too much air into the mic and picks up too much motor noise.

Second, the "Leslie effect" is an acoustical phenomenon, so you need to get some room in there if you want it to sound like a Leslie.

Third, Leslies should be miked in stereo. Use two mics, 120 to 180 degrees apart from one another. This will let you get the doppler effect that makes Leslies unique. Don't worry about miking the lower rotor.

There are two speakers in a Leslie, top is horn bottom is woofer. You need to mic both unless you have a humongous room.

Wow, haven't seen one of those in over 30 years. You might try a close and far mic, that would be my best guess without being in the room with it.

For a Vibratone cabinet, the one with just the lower rotor, I usually place a pair of microphones in an X/Y configuration about 3 feet from the cabinet, about four feet off the floor. I like that sound. Probably can not get away with that in a session where you are recording an entire rhythm section though!

Which microphones? It depends (of course) but my first try is a pair of small capsule cardioid condensers - in my case either Earthworks SR77s or AKG C-451s (wish I had a pair of KM-84s!)

In some cases I will mis-match the microphones, e.g. if the cabinet is close to a wall. You can get some interesting effects that way.

Lately I've been pointing a stereo ribbon microphone at everything I can find, in either M-S or X/Y more. It's pretty cool!

And of course you can always try large capsule microphones, multi-patten models will give you lot's of choices<G>.

The trick, at least for me, is to find a spot (there will be many) where the effect of the spinning baffle is clearly audible.

Another thing you can do to emphasize the effect is to run a plain old cabinet in parallel.

If it is a two-driver model then I start with the same stereo pair listed above, but I'll also add spot microphones, fairly close at that, to get some of that wind noise<G>! I've tried that with my Vibratone as well, but it has never impressed me.

There's some great information here!

Keep'm coming pls :-)

I'll tell him you said that