From badmuts@acadiane.org Fri Feb 08 01:34:59 2008
Subject:RE: Leslie mic question

> OK, forgetting about practicality and intentionally getting
> of on a tangent, what would be the ideal placement of mics be
> for "the sound" that we all want to be delivered to the
> board?

Whatever you do, don't put one mic left of the leslie and the other
right of the leslie horn rotor and pan them hard left/hard right on the
board, specially when recording. I see a lot of people doing this and it
sounds very unnatural and way too wide (to my ears and taste)

Here's some experience from my recording studio:

These days I always put a couple of SM57's (panned hard left and right)
in an angle of 45 degrees, both pointing at the same corner of the
leslie, fairly close to each other, where the louvres end. To my tastes
the sound picked up in the corner is warmer and richer and has more
'leslie effect' than the sound you get when pointing the mics at the
middle of the louvres.

Further, the mics being close to each other, you get a more realistic
stereo image: each time the horn passes you hear it through the left
speaker and almost immediately through the right speaker (instead of
half a rotation later), so in the stereo image you hear it passing once
per rotation.
With the 90 degree mic setup you'd hear it pass twice, which sounds very
unnatural to me, and it also gives problems with mono compatibility:
when you sum the left and right channel you also hear the horn pass
twice, so it will sound like the horn rotor spins twice as fast (and I
don't like that sound, it's just not right - to my taste).

I've tried other mics. Condensers don't work on a leslie, so stick with
dynamic mics. 57's do fine and I find them to have better quality and
richer sound than the cheaper PG series (which aren't bad for their
money, if that's what you can afford, use it).
I've tried removing the cabinet around the horn. Without the corners the
sound changes significantly, but I like the 'corner' sound, apparently
there is a lot of interaction of sound waves going on right there.

I like close miking leslies, but that's "my sound". Great for getting
that nice dirty horn distortion very audible (I'm playing rock and blues
mostly). Putting the mics farther away from the leslie will get you a
smoother sound with more room influence (and more people tripping over
the mic stands, too) that is more fit for jazz or gospel style "clean"
sound. Experiment!

You may experiment a lot with leslies and mics. A great tool for mic
placement on any instrument is wearing (closed can, well-isolating)
headphones and having someone play the instrument while you adjust
mic(s) to find the 'sweet spot'. It really makes a lot of difference,
micing up in the sweet spot or just putting a mic there pointing
somewhere you think is good just by the looks of it. Use the ears first.

To keep this a little on-topic for this list: this micing approach also
works with leslie sims where you can alter the angle of the virtual
mics.
I've tried it successfully on my XM1, sounds way better and more
realistic to me than the factory setting and gives better mono
compatibility too. It should also be doable on other clones that allow
you to change these settings.
If there's someone interested I might post the leslie sim settings
(don't have the XM1 at hand right now) I'm using.

Regards,
Theo