Recording classic guitar

[Morten]

Recording classic guitar in a church ????

Help.

[Track Rat]

What kind of mics do you have? Are you just recording or is this some kind of live performance?

[Morten]

...just recording

BPM TB 10 (tube)
BPM CR-4N-B

(German mics)

[regebro]

Hmm. There you would probably want to get some of the room in, ie not micing to close. A normal stereo setup with two condensers should do it, me thinks.

[Track Rat]

Absolutely. Either an X-Y set up or if you have a mic that does fig8 you could do a middle/side set up. Definately take advantage of the room.

[PowerCouple]

Try an M-S setup, and you will get most likely a beautiful guitar tone, specially for classic. It will just sound spacy and beautiful.

Peace...

PC

[Morten]

...an M - S setup
what the f... is that ?

[Track Rat]

Middle-Side mic'ing is a small diaphram cardiod condensor mic aimed at the guitar (this is the middle mic) and a figure 8 pick up pattern mic (the side mic) positioned very near the cardiod mic with the pick up pattern of the mic aimed to the left and right of the guitar. The cardiod mic goes to its own track while the figure 8 mic has its signal split, one side of the split to a track, the other split has the signal inverted in polarity and sent to its own track. These two tracks are panned left and right and brought up under the middle mic track, mix to taste. The big advantage to this method is a very realistic stereo image that collapses to mono with a minimum of nasty phase anomolies.

[Morten]

What about compression when I`m miksing....any suggestions ?

[Track Rat]

Personally, I wouldn't use compression while tracking. I'd save it for mix time. It's easy to put compression on a track, it's a son-of-a-bitch taking it off once it's recorded.

[doulos]

taking it off lol thats funny its hard to even cancel it!

[PowerCouple]

That's right!

Don't use anything during tracking unless desperately necessary, specially with acoustic instruments. Whatever you use now, you'll have to live with it, or track it again...if the one you already recorded wasn't the best performance of your life.

I learned it the hard way.

The M-S is the mic config I like the most, specially for classical guitars. The sound is lovely, neat, sweet...

Our buddies here already taught you how to do it, but for Dragon's sake, don't compress it before!

Peace...

PC