Shooting my own Quality UR IR's

[Severed]

I'm about to rent a hall and some decent microphones and spend an afternoon shooting a few cabinets. The more I think about this, I have questions that need answering before going ahead.

#1. Normally, when a guitar player puts a microphone on his cabinet, he is looking for a sweet spot that interacts with the tone he's dialed in through the power amp. I can't help but wonder if positioning the microphone in the same manner for shooting IR's is actually a bad thing? I ask this because we all know that placement and proximity make all the difference for a live guitar tone, however since the IR is modeling the entire cabinet, would we be better off positioning in a such a way that you capture the entire speaker and cab instead of the cone edge of the speaker?

#2. The Room, or Air, or reflections..... you can get some crazy reverb and or delay all depending on mic placement, however is this really desired for an IR or is it best to get it as "dry" and "flat" as possible? for example, shooting in an curtained dead vocal ISO room as opposed to a hall with a vaulted ceiling.

#3. Microphone selection and why. Again certain microphones are standard for live or studio capturing of a guitar playing, however I just can't help but to wonder if we'd be better off approaching this from a different angle because we are not trying to capture the tone of the guitar player, but we are trying to capture the character of the cabinet and speaker. Would it not make more sense to go with a full range microphone like an RTA mic?

Am I over thinking it and it should be done the same as a live application?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I'm about to rent a hall and some decent microphones and spend an afternoon shooting a few cabinets. The more I think about this, I have questions that need answering before going ahead.

#1. Normally, when a guitar player puts a microphone on his cabinet, he is looking for a sweet spot that interacts with the tone he's dialed in through the power amp. I can't help but wonder if positioning the microphone in the same manner for shooting IR's is actually a bad thing? I ask this because we all know that placement and proximity make all the difference for a live guitar tone, however since the IR is modeling the entire cabinet, would we be better off positioning in a such a way that you capture the entire speaker and cab instead of the cone edge of the speaker?

An IR will always capture the entire recording rig: poweramp, cabinet, microphone, even cables. The microphone position should be placed in the same way that you would position it in a live/recording situation - as that is basicly what you want to capture with your IR. As always, use your ears to find the sweet spot. You can also use a mixture of multiple microphones as in the popular mix IRs.

#2. The Room, or Air, or reflections..... you can get some crazy reverb and or delay all depending on mic placement, however is this really desired for an IR or is it best to get it as "dry" and "flat" as possible? for example, shooting in an curtained dead vocal ISO room as opposed to a hall with a vaulted ceiling.

It should almost have no noticable difference. IRs are not long enough to capture the room acoustics. When converting your impulse to an IR, it will be truncated and all room aspects are gone.

#3. Microphone selection and why. Again certain microphones are standard for live or studio capturing of a guitar playing, however I just can't help but to wonder if we'd be better off approaching this from a different angle because we are not trying to capture the tone of the guitar player, but we are trying to capture the character of the cabinet and speaker. Would it not make more sense to go with a full range microphone like an RTA mic?

Am I over thinking it and it should be done the same as a live application?

You can use a flat full range microphone to capture your IR. That was the initial approach of fractal aswell (that's why we got the microphone sims). However, the general consense is that you get more usable "out of the box" IRs when you use a colored microphone (or a blend of multiple colored microphones). In this situation, the expertise of the person shooting the IR (and knowing what sounds best) will be usable for anyone without further tweaking. After all, all microphones have a different "sweet spot", so using a full range mic will always compromise.