Unusual instrument recording (diddly bow)

[Jake_JW]

Hi guys,

I anyone recorded a diddly bow before?

Doing a little session for a friend of mine's skiffle/bluegrass/folk weirdness band this weekend and we might be limited on time - any quick starter suggestions that might save me some time on this one? Looks simple enough but being homemade I have a sinking feeling it might be a bit 'interesting' to record.

Cheers

 

[BroKen_H]

For a block bridge, you'd probably want a condenser about a foot away from the mid-point of the string (to keep from picking up slide taps). May require some odd compression if your player has heavy taps.
For a bottle bridge, I'd suggest placing a second in front of the bottle hole for blending...

Note: What I call taps are where you pull the slide off and then drop it back on the string. Some do this quite heavily and it can be audible when you mike. Others use a lighter touch.

 

[Jake_JW]

For a block bridge, you'd probably want a condenser about a foot away from the mid-point of the string (to keep from picking up slide taps). May require some odd compression if your player has heavy taps.
For a bottle bridge, I'd suggest placing a second in front of the bottle hole for blending...

Note: What I call taps are where you pull the slide off and then drop it back on the string. Some do this quite heavily and it can be audible when you mike. Others use a lighter touch.

Cool man, thanks. That was roughly where I was going to start, interesting about pulling hte mic back, didn't think about the taps. I believe it's a bass in the Diddly Bow style so it's about 5 ft long (!) :-D

Not often you get to record something like that so I might post a finished version on here when its done with some comments.