The Royer R121 is the most talked about mic for electric guitar this decade? Is a person lost in their quest for electric guitar sounds without it? Find out!

We compare the Shure SM57, Royer R121, Sennheiser MD421, Cascade Fathead II, and Shure SM7b on metal guitars. Download It!

In this quiz you can hear the following signal paths at work:
Royer R121 > Presonus Firestudio
Shure SM57 > Presonus Firestudio
Royer R121 > Vintech 1272 > Mytek AD96
Shure SM57 > Vintech 1272 > Mytek AD96
Royer R121 > Vintech 1272 > Mytek AD96 > Distressor EL-8X
Royer R121 > Trident S20 > Mytek AD96
Shure SM57 > Trident S20 > Mytek AD96
Royer R121 > M-Audio Octane
Shure SM57 > M-Audio Octane

You get the idea. Check it out.

The Recording Gear Quiz

Note: I'm not biased on this test. To be honest, I wanted to say “This $200 plugin replaces my entire amp collection”. I WANT to be able to make robo recordings with $2 in gear! Did it happen? I'll let you decide. I want to make it perfectly clear that this test was not a big deal. I probably should have played it tighter. I probably should have taken more time. I didn't really plan on making a shootout. Oh well, here goes.

Guitar – The guitar is an Agile Telecaster. Why Telecaster? Why not! I'm playing high gain rock stuff here. I realize a Telecaster is not the most obvious choice for this. Oh well. To make matters worse, these strings are robo old. To make matters even worse, you can hear just how poorly the intonation is out when I hit the higher chords. So what does this prove? Nothing! I'm not trying to prove anything. I was goofing around and not taking this too seriously. Maybe I should have restrung it. Maybe I'll do a better shootout with more direct guitar gadgets if people like this one.

Amp Simulator – Native Instruments Guitar Rig 2. Why only this one? Because it's the only one I have. Technically, I didn't really pursue this one anyway. It came with Komplete 3 which I purchased for the synths and samples. I normally am too busy pulling crap out of my highly raised nose to ever actually purchase a direct guitar product.

Amps – The amps in this contest were all my amps I own. Peavey 5150, Rivera Knucklehead, and my trusty '71 Marshall Superlead. I considered using my Fender Bronco also, but maybe I'll save that for the next one.

Cabinet – My trusty 1x12 former floor wedge on stage turned into Celestion G12H30 mega cabinet. I REALLY like this cabinet even though it looks like death. I don't use a grill! My Marshall JCM 800 4x12 cabinet has been collecting dust for some time now.

Mic – I used my Royer R121 with this. It's clear that if I wanted more fizz than this (for metal I definitely would) I would need to make some changes. With that said, I need to remember that my Mackie's tend to hype of electric guitars a little bit so guitars come out sounding a tad boring and a tad too smooth on computer speakers.

Preamp – I used my Trident S20 preamp. Not much to say there.

Converter - I used my Mytek AD96 converter on the mic'd signal. The direct guitars were tracked through the Hi-Z input in my Presonus Firestudio.

The Results: You'll have to head to the Member's Only forum here at RecordingReview.com for those! Guitar Rig 2 vs Real, Expensive Recording Rig

We've been discussing the subject of recording heavy guitars. I completely moved my control room around so I figured I'd give the new monitor location a test run by doing a short and sweet shootout between the Vintech 1272 and the Presonus M80 preamps.

The Price
Vintech 1272 - $1000 used* – 2 Channels.
Presonus M80 - $1000 used* – 8 Channels

* This is the price I paid.

Guitar
Jackson Kelly USA Marty Friedman Signature Series with EMG 81 pickup.

Guitar Amplifier
Peavey 5150 through TDH Hotplate

Cabinet
Old floor monitor wedge I blew up years ago now loaded with a Celestian G12H30. No grill!

Microphone
Royer R121 Ribbon microphone placed dead center on the cone about 6” back.

Methodology
I threw together the most intricate drum beat in the universe within Cubase using DFH Superior. Then, I played 2 tracks with the Neve and then 2 track with the Presonus. The 2 tracks for each respective preamp are panned hard left and hard right. (This is known as doubled guitars for all you newbies).

On my studio monitors, I decided to add .4dB of high shelf EQ to one of the preamps to help “even out” the tone. On my computer speakers, I can't hear this. On my studio monitors, it was super obvious that I added the EQ. Don't ask me!

So, there are 3 wav files:
Vintech 1272 wav file
Presonus M80 wav file
Preamp with 0.4 dB high shelf boost @ 2Khz

Download The ZIP File In the Member's Only Area Of The Forum

Why Would I Ruin The Science?
Why would I throw out any form of objectivity in my little test by tossing EQ on one of the files. Because this is NOT science. Everything effects everything. If the tone sounded dull, you would probably boost the high end or cut the dull stuff. While I always try to avoid EQ like the plague while tracking, I still end up using it during a mix all the time, regardless of how fancy my preamps are. If I was going to use certain preamp and I thought the tone needed a 1dB boost, I'd give it a 1dB boost. It's as simple as that. For all I know, the tone would be better to use the duller preamp and EQ than to use the preamp that wasn't dull. Maybe not!

No Bass Guitar / Samples
I considered putting bass on the tracks for the shootout, but I decided that I wanted to highlight the character of the guitars.

No High Pass Filter
On both my Mackie HR 824s and my computer speakers, one preamp had noticeably more low end meat in the palm mutes. I don't consider this a good thing, though. One preamp would need little or no treatment in the low end. The othe preamp would definitely need a little bit of low end control to fit in most mixes. I'd start with a high pass filter @ 80Hz but maybe go as high as 100Hz. There are other tricks I may use to keep the palm muting under control.

New Studio Monitor Positioning
This is a whole other audio recording blog, but I didn't realize just how aggressive the tone I was using was. I moved my studio monitors around. While it's always tough to guess what I would do with bass and such in the mix, as it stands right now, I probably would have went for a “less brittle” or “smoother” tone. This is a good problem to have right now since I'm used to not hearing the low mid right. Now it looks like I'm hearing PLENTY. Great! I'm not getting too excited yet. I'll have to do a real mix first.

The Royer Has NEVER Sounded Like That
My Royer R121 is a ribbon mic. It is usually very dark and smooth. I've tried to make tracks too bitey on purpose and the Royer has a way of ignoring all of that. However, these are the first tracks with the Royer that may be a tad too bitey. Again, maybe a bass guitar would have balanced it out, but this is a tone I would expect more with a SM 57. Now that I think about it, I did back off the cabinet by about 6”. This may have caused the low end to drop considerably. The R121 is a Figure 8 microphone and therefore has an extremely proximity effect.

Download The ZIP File In the Member's Only Area Of The Forum