Mic Placement in a Recording Studio

[Phil Dawson]

So what did you do? What mic(s) did you use? Where they placed? What were the room acoustics like? What equipment and format did you record to? What ideas did we provide that were good or didn't work out? None of us gets to record the tuba often enough to not gain from the experience of others. Thanks, Phil

[Z-Tuba Dude]

Well, this was a "hired gun" gig, so I wasn't in a position to give too much advice to the engineer. There were 5 of us (trumpet, horn, trombone [doubling on bass tbn], a reed player, and tuba).

I was experimenting on my own, and found that positioning my home mic about 2 feet away from the bell, at an angle of about 30-45 degrees off the "plane" of the bell rim, produced a good result.

I found, as others mentioned, pointing the mic directly down, at the throat of the horn (still 2 feet away), produced a gritty, noisy tone. Pointing the mic directly at the edge of the bell, produced a very smooth sound (a little too smooth for my taste). I split the difference, and got clearer attacks, while maintaining a nice sound.

(I should mention, that I tried the same mic positions, with 2 different horns, and discovered that the results were a little different for each horn).

Thanks, again to everyone who helped!