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dubkitty wrote:should i get into microphone placement?

Yes, especially for reverberated sounds. Also, although I've never tried it, if you have an open back amplifier/cabinet you can try micing the back of the speaker, I've read that that yields some interesting tones.

my favorite guitar-amp thing is to point the microphone at the edge of the speaker cone rather than the center, which i find gives less amp buzz and a more focused sound. if possible, i like to run a second room mic on guitars as well so the room sound can be mixed with the close mic. i'm not sure what to do for miking a bass amp, because i always run bass into the mixer since i have no bass amp. my instinctive response is to put the mic about a foot or 18 inches in front of the stack so the waveform cam propagate before it hits the mic. i like to do ambient drum miking with two mics: one overhead and one about a foot in front of the kit. for any acoustic instrument i like two microphones, usually one close and one stood a few inches or a foot off at an angle to get the body resonance or string rattle; for violin i've had good results with a pair of mics flown 18 inches or so on either side of the violin, high enough that the bow doesn't hit them.