Acoustic Guitar With My New Earthworks...

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borntoplease

New member
first off... much to my pleasure, my humble home studio is up and running. picked up a G5 and a digi 002. so far, things are great. there is a lot of learning to do with pro tools, but half the fun is learning... anyway... so i picked up a pair of earthworks SR71s to record acoustic guitar. for those who dont know, these are the cardiod ones, not the omnis. they dont make the SR71s any more... anyway... im recording my martin acoustic, its very rich in the lows and low mids... with enough top end to please me. im just having trouble capturing a good sound with my mics. ive tried everything, sound hole and fret board, sound hole and over the shoulder, one on the sound hole only... but everything just comes out very boomy, lots of proximity effect. has anyone used these mics on acoustic guitar? any tips? i know they are great mics, and its only my lack of skills thats holding me back. i can tell they have great potential. with EQ i am getting some cool sounds, but that with a LOT of EQ. someone told me they saw a picture of someone using earthworks on an acoustic and they were like 5 feet from the source... is this how far i should be pulling them back? right now, its like a foot to two feet... any less, and i feel like i lose some of the presence of the guitar. i also realise that it has a lot to do with the fact that my room im recording in blows, but i know thats not everything. any tips would be helpful... thanks :confused:
 
borntoplease said:
i also realise that it has a lot to do with the fact that my room im recording in blows, but i know thats not everything.
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Acutally it's close to everything. Earthworks are such sensitive and transparent mics that if your room blows - the mics blow, too.

Stay away from the soundhole. Forget trying to use two mics for right now. Don't use any EQ. Just use one mic for now and work with it. I'd suggest that you position a single SR71 about 18" away from your guitar pointed right around the 12th - 14th fret. Have the mic height exactly as high as the guitar neck so it's pointing right at the frets and the mic is perpendicular at a 90-degree angle to the neck. [ After that you might try turning the mic just a hair so it's slightly off-axis. ] Also when you record the guitar try rolling at around 100Hz on the playback track. That'll clear out that low-end mud.

Work with that. If you can't get a good sound try moving to a few different locations in the room with the same set up and recording. See if you get anything that sounds good. If not then you'll need to address the acoustics in your room. You might even just want to put up a couple blankets around just to get the sound at least a little under control.

You did get some good mics with the SR71's, but you also got some of the most difficult mics to worth with if you're not in a good-sounding space. Very unforgiving. You might get some decent results with a single SR71, but if you have a bad-sounding space using a pair of SR71's for stereo and getting a good sound is going to border somewhere around unlikely to impossible. A mic like the Peluso CEMC6 that I recommended to you last month is a much easier mic to work with. Keep working with the SR71's. There's a good sound in there somewhere. Just might take some work to find it.
 
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Hmmmm. What Dot says is true but I've not had as difficult a time using my pair. Granted, on guitars I use just a single mic. I use the pair as drum overheads all the time with stellar results. Maybe my room is better than I give it credit for.
 
If your room does indeed "blow" try a trick that I picked up from one of these forums. Drape moving blankets over boom mic stands set up like a "T". Then surround yourself with them - an improvised isolation booth.

I just used a single SR71 on acoustic about 10 days ago. We went 6-8 inches away from the fret board at the 12th fret slightly angled towards the sound hole. I've read - and experienced - these mics' proximity effect are such that the closer you get the more flat the response becomes. The further away you go introduces bass roll off. Keeping that in mind, I believe improvements to your room or the "moving blanket iso booth" will yield great results.

Good luck!
 
If your room does indeed "blow" try a trick that I picked up from one of these forums. Drape moving blankets over boom mic stands set up like a "T". Then surround yourself with them - an improvised isolation booth.
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Yeah, the blanket thing sounds like a good idea. A rug below and some Auralex foam on the ceiling directly above the blanket iso booth would cut down the high freq reflections in those directions too. I don't see how, in a bad room, you can avoid close mic'ing. Sounds like the close mic problem was caused by trying to mic the soundhole.

Tim
 
My favorite spot to record acoustic guitars with cardioid mics is right around where the body meets the neck (around 12th - 14th fret) about 6" away. If you want a little more bass, SLOWLY turn the mic towards the soundhole while playing. It usually only needs to point a few inches closer. Too close will cause clipping from the rushing of air.

As far as the other mic, I like it a few inches below or above the bridges aimed at the strings near the bridge, usually about 6" away. You can also play around with the "sweet spot" of the soundboard below and behind the bridge.

If you haven't already read it, I'd read Harvey's mic thread at the top of the forum...I know somebody outlined all the parts regarding acoustic guitar recently...

- Jarick
 
Dot said:
A mic like the Peluso CEMC6 that I recommended to you last month is a much easier mic to work with. .
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yeah, but i coulndt afford them right now... i got this pair for 400 bucks.

i think i just need to improve my room... oh well.
 
borntoplease said:
first off... ive tried everything, sound hole and fret board, sound hole and over the shoulder, one on the sound hole only... :
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I just re-read this and it hit me like a ton of bricks. You can't mic a Dreadnaught at the sound hole. That'll woof out just about any mic. I have a D-41 and my Dad's D-35 behave exactly the same in that respect. I'd stay in the neck/body joint area with any mic on a Martin unless you DO have a great room so you can back the mics away from the guitar.
 
Track Rat said:
I just re-read this and it hit me like a ton of bricks. You can't mic a Dreadnaught at the sound hole. That'll woof out just about any mic. I have a D-41 and my Dad's D-35 behave exactly the same in that respect. I'd stay in the neck/body joint area with any mic on a Martin unless you DO have a great room so you can back the mics away from the guitar.
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Yep. That's the problem right there. I have a Taylor 814ce, big-bodied rosewood acoustic...it won't let me get near the soundhole. "Boomy" perfectly describes any attempts to get near the soundhole with a mic on that guitar. On older Gibson acoustics...not a problem.
 
earthworks won't flatter the sound any...so what you have is what you get. if your guitar is already full of low mids...well having a cardioid up close isn't going to help any...

i've recorded some GREAT classical guitar with my sr71...
 
since it seems your forced into close micing try, well, it's all good advice, but what someone said earlier
14th fret or so, however far away (play with that)
but try rotateing the mic so that it's not pointing at the sound hole....
probably not directly awayfrom it mind you, but as you rotate the mic away from the sound hole it should be like a tone nob
going from boomy-to thin.
(not rotateing the mic away from the git, but up the neck, just to clairify)

also try micing the sound board for the fun of it.
it may not be the sound you're looking for, but it can be a very easy to use sound.

i even got a good sound from the horn (or whatever it's called on an acu) one time, not the regulation acu sound mind you, but it did what i wanted it to.
 
I have a thread in the Recording Techniques forum about this, but I'll share here as well.

Someone recently showed me a great stereo technique where you take a traditional XY setup and rotate it 90 degrees vertical, so that you're basically micing top strings and bottom strings instead of left and right. I tried it a few inches off the 12th fret, hard panned...sounds great. Should sound really great with a Martin and a pair of Earthworks.
 
Track Rat said:
I just re-read this and it hit me like a ton of bricks. You can't mic a Dreadnaught at the sound hole. That'll woof out just about any mic. I have a D-41 and my Dad's D-35 behave exactly the same in that respect. I'd stay in the neck/body joint area with any mic on a Martin unless you DO have a great room so you can back the mics away from the guitar.
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this was my intitial thought.
here is my next thought. i have a walk in closet, probably about 5' x 5'. if i bought sound foam and slapped it up on all the walls... would that be better for micing the guitar? obviously i couldnt pull them too far off the guitar, considering how small the room is. but i could do some "medium" micing... if i got creative with stand placement and what not.
or would it just be better to try closer techniques in a larger room... i will probably try both, but would live some input before i spend the money on sound foam.

thanks again guys, this thread has made me feel better...
 
you can get bed padding (read egg crate foam) from wall mart or k mart or whatever, and although it's not the best thing, it's cheap.
 
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