recording acoustic guitar with two mics?

C

coolsoundman

New member
hey folks,
i want to know a couple of things to see if i'm doing it right. last night, i was recording an acoustic guitar and i was using two pencil condensor mics. the mic placement at first was set far apart pointing at the right direction. one mic pointing to the hole of the guitar and the other at the neck, bottom of the neck. i took one take, then i took another take at it, but this time the mics were closer together. almost in the "y" postion. I kept the second take with the mic's being closer together. when i played the playback, it was like the volume was too low, but my recording meters were reading somewhere around -15. i came home and played it through my monitors and still sounded very soft, but then i clicked the phase button and the volume jumped higher. so, my first question is, what is the correct way to mic a accoustic guitar? and second is, when i'm using two mics that are close together and pointing at the same direction, would i have to invert one of those mics? also, do you eq the inverted mic channel the same way you would as the other? you know like add efx and other stuff to it too?
thanks for listening guys, appreciate it.
 
I love using two mics on an acoustic guitar, and it can be interesting to play with the mix of the two mics (e.g. I love panning the soundhole mic far left and the fingerboard mic far right, with a little 'verb on just the fingerboard mic)!

But enough about my crap... to your question, it sounds like you have some phasing issues with your mic placement. This is when the two mics are picking up the same frequencies at almost the same time and act as a sort of filter for each other. You can read more here: http://www.recordingeq.com/EQ/req1001/mmi.htm

Here's what I do: I start by setting up mic #1 about 6" from the guitar and just rear of the soundhole. Mic #2 goes roughly 12" from the fretboard and aimed just a little up from the point the neck meets the guitar body. The key is that the mic's are aimed at different points and are spaced enough for some separation. You can view some diagrams and more ideas here: http://www.harmony-central.com/Features/FRecAcousticGtr/002.html
 
One of my big faves is a simple, VERTICAL X-Y, around 8-12" from the neck joint.

Normally works better along with a LDD (or LDC) around the lower quarter of the sound board, but works well without.
 
First, are those pencils omnis or cardioids? If they're omnis, that could make your placement more critical because of increased side sensitivity. You might want/need to to either switch to cardioids or move the mics closer to their respective parts of your guitar, or both. An alternative would be to try a vertical Jecklin disc arrangement.

Also, you might want to try taking the lower mic off the sound hole and putting it on the lower bout or saddle area instead. Not only will you get more (and usually less muddy sounding) volume off the the lower body than you will the hole itself, but you know it's going to resonate in concert with the strings. The stuff coming out of the hole has been bouncing around inside the body and there's no guarantee what phase angles it may be coming out at relative to the string vibration.

Also, you might want to double-check that the polarity of your mics and cables actually match. You might have a bad cable on your hands or a mic that accidentally has it's wiring inverted.

G.
 
X-y works great..I love my acoustic with two mic's and paned, it sounds so good...Also for another cool sound...try placeing mic1 6inces from where the neck meets the body..then put one over your right ear pointing down..then pan L&R..sounds good with some work!!!
 
What i like to use is two small diapraghm condensers in one of the configurations already mentioned, i find that using big diapraghm condensers results in a boomy sound and not so well defined.
 
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