Electric Acoustic Guitar: Better To Mic At Speaker Or Mic At Sound Hole??

M

Mike Freze

New member
I have an Ovation acoustic/electric guitar, big round back design (built in jack for amplification, tonal settings on the guitar itself). It cost me $800 20 years ago, so I'm sure it's worth more now. Still sounds sooo good!!

If I want to record a track with my Ovation, I can plug it in to my Fender Music Man tube amp or my solid state Crate amp and mic it or I can bypass the amp and just record a take with a mic near the hole of the guitar itself.

Any advice of which way to go if you have both options?? Either way, should I use my condenser mic or my Sure SM57 if I mic the amp speaker?
 
I don't know much about plugging an acoustic into a Fender amp. I plugged mine into my Marshall once. As you might have guessed, it didn't sound very good. Kind of like a Marshall, but with a lot of mud. But this wasn't an acoustic guitar kind of amp.

I'd try tracking two track at the same time, if you have the means. I'd put a condenser microphone in front of the guitar in a good sounding room. And I'd plug the instrument cable into a DI box, and the DI box right into your recorder.
 
If you want it to sound anything like an like an acoustic, do NOT run it thru an amp. Either amp. It will sound, at best, like an electric guitar, at worst (and more likely) like flat crap. It probably has a peizo under-saddle pickup, and they are the flattest, most unmusical pickup you ever heard. (I have one in my Martin, so I know from whence I speak.) Mic it. A condenser would be best, I will leave it to others here to recommend which ones. Whatever you use, point it at about the 14th fret, not the sound hole.

And sorry to burst your bubble, but chances are your Ovation is not worth even as much as you paid for it. 20 years does not make an Ovation vintage, just an old 1990 model. NOTHING from the 90's is vintage, won't be for ANOTHER 20 or more years, if then. And please, don't think I am being a Martin snob (I sometimes am, but not at the moment.) My 10-year old Martin is not worth as much as they sold for, new, either. Used gear is most often worth about half it's sold-new (NOT MSRP bullshit figures, which nobody every paid) price. It's gotta get OLD before it starts rising in value.
 
Hey, guys, thanks for the advice!! I will only record my Ovation with a mic to the guitar (no amp speakers). I also understand that vintage models need to be much older than 20 years to increase in value.

Years ago when when I played live as a solo singer/guitarist, I did in fact plug my Ovation through my amp (as well as my mic, if you can believe that) and it all sounded so good. If I tried to plug my Fender electric guitar in my amp with my mic, it sounded so thin: no bottom. The Ovation did provide that bottom as a solo performer. But I guess that's live performing in the good ol' days when you could be appreciated as a solo artist: no background recordings to accompany your act, just you and your guitar and your mic through one amp (then, I used a Dual Showman Fender amp, two 15s, twin reverb, tube amp). Maybe that made a difference, too.

Mike Freze

Mike Freze
 
Funny thing about acoustics or electro acoustics; I've been doing alot of recording with them recently but with a more experimental edge, mixing the plugged in sound {which, generally I don't like} with the miked sound, just for a bit of 'presence'. I've done a few combinations. But for the first time in 20 years, I've gotten an acoustic sound I like and I did this by changing my pick. I used to use one of those huge triangular picks because anything smaller would fall out of my fingers (!). It tended to give a very attack-y, heavy sound. Recently I was doing a recording for a friend and she suggested a softer approach. She liked the sound when I used my fingers but I could see that was going to end up painful so I used a small pick, my little son's one actually. It was just right. And I miked it with an SM58 about a foot from the sound hole. It sounded lovely, no boominess, nice high end yet full. Strange combination. Yet satisfying.
 
i have the ovation slim back for over twenty years too and have been experimenting with recording it over the last year or so the things i like best in a mix are
small diaphram condensor using the twelve at twelve approach (you tube it and see)
and peizo pick up back in the mix.
or even xy micing with a pair of sdc but i have to put extra acoustic treatment round the area.
hope this help
Next up is mid side experiments if anyone has any advice on this please dont hesitate to jump in
 
Hey Grim... I've been experimenting with acoustic guitar miking too of recent times... I've never been happy with the pure miked sound... I play Australian Matons and they have a distinctive sound that's hard to capture (by me, anyway) with mics... so I've done a number of things to try to improve it recently... including feeding the pickup into my Laney tube 30W electric guitar amp situated in another room, set to a trebly sort of sound, and adding that into the mix along with various mics.

I also run the pickup into a GT10 effects pedal and put that into the mix as well sometimes... just on a preamp setting, no effects...

Next song I'm considering miking the acoustic with it's butt plug (feedback buster thingy...) in - I have a theory it'll actually sound OK, but we'll see..

Another thing I"ll try is to mirror play the track on LP electric, slightly overdriven via the amp, miked back with a 57, and have that in the mix as well just at the level of audibility...

All of these things appear to me to add frequencies that I find pleasing into a plain miked acoustic signal. As you know, I'm primalriy an acoustic guitarist these days writing acoustic songs, so I'm always experimenting with slightly off the wall approaches to recording the damn things... including almost always the doubling and L/R hard panning thing...

As I'm not generally using drums and audible electrics, I'm always trying to get a "big" sound with the acoustics...
 
My experience is that it depends on whether your guitar sounds better through the amp or not.

My Taylor with Maple back and sides has a really brittle tone if its not plugged in, but really shines through my California Blonde amp. And no, it doesn't sound a bit like an electric guitar.

I tried micing it while playing fingerstyle, and recording it direct, but the tone was no good and the tracks were riddled with fret noises and finger scrapes. I didn't get good results until I plugged the guitar in and miced the amp. And I would use the SM57 on the amp.

However, if I had the Rosewood model I would mic the guitar, not the amp, because that guitar sounds the best unplugged. And I would use the condenser on the guitar, and stay away from the sound hole.

But my impression of Ovation guitars is that they sound best through a direct box. I don't own one, because I don't like the way those guitars sound unplugged or through an amp, but I was impressed by the tone when another player went into a PA through a direct box. I just think those guitars are made for that.
 
Most, if not all, decent "acoustic guitar" amps have processing (usually digital) to sweeten the sound- and it is almost always artificial. This is not to say it sounds bad- they usually sound quite good (even Behringer's ACX line.) I recently traded, straight across, a Behringer ACX-1000 for a Fender Super Chorus. The guy just could not get a decent "acoustic" tone through that amp. The truth is piezo pickups just sound like crap, by themselves, and you can not make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Their best feature is they are very unlikely to feed back- but think about it- acoustic guitar feedback happens because the acoustic guitar body that does such a good job of acoustically amplifying the sound, also does as "good" a job of amplifying the electronic feedback. I am expressing this poorly, but my point is, if you want the best acoustic guitar sound, you gotta use what gives you the best acoustic guitar sound- that being the body of a good acoustic guitar. Bypass that- and a piezo picks up the sound directly from the bridge, not from the body's resonation- and you lose that nice acoustic sound. There are all kinds of things happening inside and outside an acoustic guitar's body- natural reverb, delay, resonation, sympathetic vibration, etc. etc- that the piezo NEVER sees. A good acoustic guitar amp simulates much of that- plenty enough to sound good in a live setting- but recording is a different world, and you will get better sounding results by recording through a mic. Exceptions like tonesponges Taylor do not disprove this- maple is, perhaps, a poor tone wood, and even masters of the art like Taylor and Martin make mistakes. Nobody fully understands everything that's going on with an acoustic guitar, nor does anybody fully understand the whys and hows of what parts they do understand. I am going to make a bold statement, and I make it without fear of contradiction: A well-made acoustic guitar is such a complicated thing, what with the millions of variances in woods, the ways they are processed (even cutting a tree down is a process...) and post-production factors like aging, humidity of the wood and air, etc. etc. an ifinitum, that NO one, even if they truly had God (if there is a God) on their side, will ever duplicate the sound of even ONE well-made acoustic guitar. Close, maybe- but close only counts in horse shoes and nuclear strikes.

Mic your Ovation. That's your best bet, but if it does not sound good then, it's just not a great recording guitar. It may well be a good guitar, or a good live guitar, but being good at one things does not make a person or object necessarily great at another.

Oh, and I truly hope I didn't offend when I said your Ovation probably was not worth as much as you thought or hoped. Dollar value does not, in and of it's self, make a good guitar.
 
Thanks, guys! Yes, my Ovation is still a great sounding guitar: it's the older, bigger back type. I played over 500 gigs with that guitar and it still sounds great! After all the climate changes, leaving it out in the car overnight (ouch!), etc. What I like about it is it has that fully dimension you don't find in many other good quality guitars: a full deep end, good mid range, yet still with a flavorful high range without sounding harsh or clangy. It really works well for solo guitar players who perform live. It's like you have a mini band with that guitar: the lows are there for rhythm, the mids are there for tonality and beautiful chord changes, and the highs come through when you fingerpick or strum high chords.

Mike
 
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