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Tone
,→Room Placement and Conditioning
=== Room Placement and Conditioning ===
One thing that cannot be understated for a mic'ed tone is the room where the cab is mic'ed. Preventing all reflections from a room is virtually impossible and also undesirable. A mild reverb makes for a natural sound. Try listening to synthesized sounds with no reverb through earphones, and you'll find that the sound is uncomfortable and quite artificial. Many studios treat their rooms not to eliminate all reflections but to minimize some of the nasty effects they can cause. In particular, they avoid parallel walls which produce ringing at certain resonant frequencies depending on the size of the room. If a room does have parallel walls (extremely common), placing dampeners on each wall so sound will not reflect back and forth directly between two opposite walls will be the most beneficial to prevent ringing. Also, normal dampeners will not affect low frequencies, requiring bass traps to do so.
Even with good treatment, there will still be some nodes and anti-nodes throughout the room for certain frequencies. This is where cabinet and mic placement becomes important. Even with the most expensive gear in the world, if your mic is in a dead spot, your frequency spectrum might have a critical null that is like putting a blanket over the tone. If you find you just can't get a good sound, even after messing with mic placement for a long time, try moving the cab around the room and re-mic'ing - you might be hitting a node. Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to determine where in advance a node will be - it depends not only on the size and shape of the room, but the placement of the cabinet and the frequencies being produced. It's best to avoid corners, which tend to be bass nodes. Otherwise, a bit of experimentation is in order.
=== Near vs. Far Mic'ing ===
=== Mic Pre-amps ===