{"id":461,"date":"2026-07-02T10:09:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T08:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frankdoorhof.com\/music\/?p=461"},"modified":"2026-07-02T10:09:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T08:09:30","slug":"a-budget-friendly-mic-positioning-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frankdoorhof.com\/music\/2026\/07\/02\/a-budget-friendly-mic-positioning-system\/","title":{"rendered":"A budget friendly mic positioning system"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Secret Is Often an Inch Away<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When we as guitar players talk about tone, the conversation usually ends up at the guitar, the pedals, or the amplifier. But in reality, one of the biggest tone controls in the entire signal chain is often the microphone position. This is also why you never get one IR with a pack, there are always different ones for different mics and mic positions. Or when you use a system like Genome you can move the mics around virtually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Move a microphone just one inch across a speaker cone and the sound can change dramatically. Point it straight at the center of the speaker and you’ll often capture a brighter, more aggressive tone with plenty of attack. Slide it toward the edge of the cone and suddenly the sound becomes warmer, smoother, and often a bit easier to fit in a mix, although this is very much taste dependent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huge differences without spending money, can it be true?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

What makes this fascinating is that nothing in the rig changed.
Same guitar, amp and player.
The only thing that changed was where the microphone is located. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a lesson that reminds me of something I often teach in photography: gear matters, but understanding how to use it matters far more. The smallest adjustment can create the biggest difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And history is full of examples where breaking the rules led to legendary sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the studio it’s time to experiment<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

One famous example is the recording of Led Zeppelin’s drums for\u00a0When the Levee Breaks<\/em>. Engineer Andy Johns placed microphones far away in a stairwell instead of using a conventional close-miking setup. The natural reflections of the building became part of the instrument, creating one of the most recognizable drum sounds ever recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another classic story comes from the early days of guitar recording. Engineers would sometimes place microphones behind open-back cabinets, in hallways, or even in adjacent rooms to capture character and ambience that didn’t exist directly in front of the speaker. These “wrong” placements often produced the sounds that everyone later tried to copy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also bands like Queen, Metallica and of course Vai are well known to experiment with mic placements, blending cabs and amps to create huge and unique sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The takeaway is simple: don’t assume the best microphone position is the textbook position. Put on headphones, move the mic, listen carefully, and trust your ears. Sometimes the magic isn’t in buying another piece of gear. Sometimes it’s just one inch to the left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Automate it<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As mentioned you can nowadays run a tube amp straight into a load box and load the IRs you like. A huge advantage is that you can later always change the sound by changing cabs and mics. It’s something I love to use. But in my personal opinion running a tube amp into a vintage Marshall cab with blackbacks and a selection of nice microphones still sounds better. I don’t know why but when I use a modeler I love the sound but it’s always digital sounding.

When I use Genome just for cab simulation it’s awesome, there is actually nothing I would like to improve.
But when I use the cab and mic, it just adds something extra. It sounds like it has more “balls” so to say \ud83d\ude00
Is it worth a huge investment..?
Probably not, but I still owned that Marshall cab so for me it was a matter of building a hush box (you don’t want a 4×12 with a 100W tube head next to you) and by using a Marshall SE100 as load box I got a very workable situation. I can still hear the cab but as soon as the console is activated the sound is not infecting the sound I hear direct and visa versa (don’t forget to check that too, it can give some very weird or cool effects)<\/p>\n\n\n

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My music is hobby so I don’t have an unlimited budget to spend on mics.
I have a few nice ones but to get a good result in the hush box the SM57 would be perfect. When I saw the Slate Digital ML-2 however for the same price I got that one.

It’s a mic that sounds close to the SM57 without any emulation software running, but can change its “behavior” to emulate a lot of different microphones. To be honest, I’m always the kind of person that doesn’t care if an emulation is not 100% accurate.
No one uses a mic without any post processing, not all mics are the same, and not all rooms, pre-amps etc. so as long as they change the character and you can blend them without thinking about phasing issues, I’m fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the ML-2 does exactly that. I love the blend of a SM47 with a Ribbon mic. And now I can just move them around without thinking about phasing issues. Yes you read move around, in the software you can move the mics closer and further away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Especially with a system like this we need perfect placement.
When I started I spend several hours playing with the mic in different locations on different speakers.
Eventually I found my sound. But with another track or other amp I liked it a bit more to the left, or right.
Because the cab is in a box I started looking at mic positioning systems, and immediately stopped. For a hobby it’s not affordable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A dolly?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For photography\/video you can get remote controlled dolly’s that can move around a fixed track.
And that got me thinking. what if……
So we ordered a Neewer dolly which was compatible with iOS (some are only android or manual) and had an extensive app.
To mount the mic I’m using a PlatyPod handle <\/a>which fits both the mic and dolly.<\/p>\n\n\n

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So in theory this would work.
The only problem…..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The app<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To make this work you would need to be able to make the dolly move in steps.
The app doesn’t support this, but you can easily simulate it by pressing the direction button twice after each other.
It makes the dolly move just a few mm…. Awesome.

Ofcourse you want to be able to see inside a dark box, so I also added a cheap night vision security camera.
Testing went great, but as sometimes happens, as soon as you start to use it.
The box was closed, I sat down (about 2 meters from the dolly) and the first two steps went great, but then I was one big crash when the dolly dove off the plate. The connection is not stable enough for the double tap.

So for now we can call this experiment failed. Unless Neewer adds an option to move the dolly 1 step per press.
For now I’m back moving the mic manually which is also fun (no it’s not).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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