DAN AGOSTO: Hello gearheads. My name is Dan, and you're watching an instructional screencast from Gearwire.Com. In this one, we're going to be taking a listen to what the BLUE Microphones Ball can do as far as recording a distorted guitar.

We got a little solo action as well as some rhythm, and we'll be able to hear both of them within a mix. I really like the BLUE Ball for a lot of things but especially heavier guitar. For hundred-dollar mic, I think it pretty does it much better than any other mic in that range and pretty much far above that. It's kind of my go to mic for rock guitar.

The particular setup I'm using today, the guitar is a Gibson SG Vintage 1997, and it's plugged into a Fender Frontman 25R. Now, this is one of the cheapest amps that Fender makes but it is pretty much exactly like the first amp I ever had, which was a Fender Champion 10. It's got all the same controls pretty much, the same I/O almost, but it has definitely the same sound as the same amplifier which I tragically blew up one day whilst experimenting. I wont go into it; it's too tragic. But anyway, I picked it up and I do like it because it sort of brings me back to the days I was learning guitar, and it sort of has its own sound, you know, not particularly amazing but I do like to use it every once in a while, and I think the Ball marries well with it. And so let's take a listen. Let's do the rhythm guitar first. I was playing and doing the solo first but let's do the rhythm since it seems more appropriate. I'm going to solo the rhythm part and let's just take a listen.

[DAN PLAYS RECORDED RHYTHM GUITAR PART]

So the mic is positioned pretty much straight on of the voice cone. That's how I like to use this microphone. I think if you get off to the side a little bit, which a lot of people like to do, it gets a little muddy.

So, for a hundred-dollar mic, it does fairly well. So let's get into what we plugged it into. I actually plugged into the a Focusrite Platinum Penta, turned of the compression. It's sort of a -- it's just basically a preamp and a compressor, and that's how I use it, and I just used it for the preamp in this case. And, the reason why I think it works well with this mic, this preamp, is because the microphone itself has a preamp built into it, sort of like the preamp that you might find in a condenser microphone, and the purpose of the preamp in the microphone is actually to decouple it or sort of isolate it from the preamp so the quality of the preamp doesn't affect this microphone as much as a condenser would, even though it's a dynamic, a large diaphragm in fact just to be exact.

So let's listen to our solo track, soloed. Now, I mean I'm not the greatest soloist but you know I do my best so let's just listen to it and see how it sounds.

[DAN PLAYS RECORDED LEAD GUITAR TRACK]

So that's just for the sound. It's got a lot of mice midrange I think. I think that's why I like it so much. Well listen to both these sections in with the mix, and you'll see that it really does punch out and you don't have to like raise it up to levels that are ridiculous like you might with a vocal track, so let's give it a listen.

[DAN PLAYS ENTIRE MIX FEATURING RECORDED LEAD GUITAR PARTS]

So that's the solo sound. I may fool around with that. That's completely dry. I might use some EQ or I may even re-record it with a different setting, different mic, who knows? It's not -- I wouldn't call it perfect but for the purposes of this video, I think it really gets across the type of sound that you get on a solo. Now, let's listen to the rhythm sound.

[DAN PLAYS ENTIRE MIX FEATURING RECORDED RHYTHM GUITAR PARTS]

So that’s why I really feel that this microphone excels. It gives a really meaty like rhythm out of a rhythm tone, out of an amp that is really not all that great and not all that heavy. It does have a good amount of proximity effect that's why I do like to move it so close to the voice coil to really get that bass going on the guitar, but the proximity effect is not soloed that it's getting in the way of the bass and the kick drum.

So, for a hundred-dollar mic, it does a really good job for this one particular thing. It does a few other things all right as well, like for vocals it's all right and maybe even the bottom of the snare drum; every once in a while throw it there. Thanks for checking out the video.