amping classical guitar

D

daveblue222

New member
played a small restaurant gig last night and used a large diaphragm condenser to mic my guitar. it sounded great when i had it at low volume but then started to feedback lots when i turned it up. so had to deal with at a lower volume than i would of liked. I was running the mic straight into a powered monitor but have also had this problem when going into a desk/pa.

my friend suggested a good clip on pickup, but i havent really seen classical guitarists use these. what is best to amplify CG ? what mics/pickups does everyone suggest?
i really have no idea what to go for :confused:

all help much appreciated
 
I think that I'd stick with a good ol' cardioid or super cardioid pattern mic. The SM57 would be the obvious candidate. It's got a focused pattern that would help combat feedback.

I have to wonder if a ribbon mic would be OK for anything other than the sheltered environment of a studio. Are they too fragile to gig with? And what is the typical pickup pattern of a ribbon? Would it have too broad of a pattern to use in a live situation, picking up everything in the room and feeding it back through the PA system? I dunno, just kind of thinking out loud. I'd think that their ability to very faithfully reproduce an instrument's sound would compliment a nylon string guitar, but I have a feeling that they're not very well-suited for a live performance.

Maybe a good graphic or parametric EQ would help you "ring out" the room you're playing in, helping to maximize gain before feedback for each specific venue. I've only tried once to use a condensor mic with my nylon string guitar, and it was basically like you described: a feedback festival.

I go through a Trace Acoustic amp that has 1/4" inputs on one channel and an XLR input with phantom power on the other. It has a notch filter, which will notch out a particular narrow frequency band to help control feedback. That's about the most effective thing for fighting feedback on that amp, so that's why I recommend checking out something that'll let you hone in on a frequency and attenuate it.
 
I used to work with a classical guitarist who did small to medium size halls, we ended up with an AT condenser that came with a bracket that placed the mic on the treble side of the soundhole. Ran the mike into a JC-77 and had a very serviceable sound with good portability. Of course, with the newer acoustic amps, the sound might be even better.
 
Here's a solution for 2 dollars.

Go to radio shack and get a piezo element. They come in a plastic case. Rip it out of the plastic case and tape it down to the sound board just below the bridge. Solder the leads to any old mono jack and run it straight to the PA.

Feedback when amping/micing an acoustic will always be a problem. But this, IMHO, is the best bet. I put piezos on everything. Guitars electric and acoustic, drums, cymbal... anything.
 
Piezos need a high-impedance buffer close to them, or they don't sound very good. A high-impedance instrument input is OK, a 10M ohm buffer in the guitar is better. But a piezo will rarely sound as good as a well-placed mic.

As for mics, condenser mics per se are not problematic, it's the use and placement of them that is the trick. Closer is always better for live sound as it maximizes gain before feedback. Hence the AT style systems (which cleverly benefit from boundary effect).

Off the guitar, polar pattern is more important than operating principle (dynamic vs. condenser). LDCs often have a not very tight and also highly variable with frequency polar response. SDCs are often much better. Plus people don't seem to mind an SDC tight on their guitar (I prefer aiming at bottom of upper bout for live sound), whereas an LDC a few inches away will cause many guitarists to flip out.

If you can keep the guitar out of the wedges, you should be fine. If not, well I ran monitor mix on a show with a bunch of nylon string guitarists with mics, the rhythm guitars shared a ribbon mic (which worked, but would not work for lead IMO, I don't think ribbons are hi-fi at all), the lead dude used an SM81. He had a wedge at his feet (he was up on a stool), the SM81 ideally would be aimed with that wedge off-axis but he wanted it horizontal. With only a two-band parametric I did what I could, but bottom line is he had enough of his guitar in his wedge to get the job done.

For a solo guitarist with no wedge I don't really see what the trouble would be.
 
Tadpui said:
I have to wonder if a ribbon mic would be OK for anything other than the sheltered environment of a studio. Are they too fragile to gig with? And what is the typical pickup pattern of a ribbon? Would it have too broad of a pattern to use in a live situation, picking up everything in the room and feeding it back through the PA system? I dunno, just kind of thinking out loud. I'd think that their ability to very faithfully reproduce an instrument's sound would compliment a nylon string guitar, but I have a feeling that they're not very well-suited for a live performance.
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Royer makes two road-going ribbons - the R121 Live and R122 Live. Not sure about anyone else. I think the Royers are figure-8 patterns.
 
haymedic said:
http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090804023051AAV3ode
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I just read that "best" answer and it sucked. The other two answers were much better.

Piezos are better than mics? Only for volume, and again I don't see why volume is a problem on a classical stage. A good mic will hand a piezo its arse in sound quality.

And micing the soundhole "as we use in the recording studio"? Remind me to never go to that recording studio.

My personal favorite, "No offense but we are in the 20th century," posted seven months ago :laughings:
 
mshilarious said:
I just read that "best" answer and it sucked. The other two answers were much better.

Piezos are better than mics? Only for volume, and again I don't see why volume is a problem on a classical stage. A good mic will hand a piezo its arse in sound quality.

And micing the soundhole "as we use in the recording studio"? Remind me to never go to that recording studio.

My personal favorite, "No offense but we are in the 20th century," posted seven months ago :laughings:
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I was going to post exactly the same comments but I wasn't in the mood for a fight abut it.;)
 
At the Yahoo Answers site, The "Top Contributor" that gave the best answer about recording nylon string guitars contributes in both Recording Arts and Horoscopes. So yeah...

Eh, I can't rag on him too hard but micing the sound hole? I couldn't let that one go, I had to leave a comment on his answer. The question is "resolved" so you can't contribute more (better) answers which is too bad. That's a pretty terrible format for a forum: "OK, my question is answered, no more contributions!".

Zaphod B said:
Royer makes two road-going ribbons - the R121 Live and R122 Live. Not sure about anyone else. I think the Royers are figure-8 patterns.
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Thanks Zaphod for the clarification about the ribbon mics.

mshilarious said:
I don't think ribbons are hi-fi at all
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Really? That's surprising to me. Although I've known about the existence of ribbon mics for quite a while now, I'm just now starting to pay attention to them lately. I don't know much about how they work, or how they otherwise compare to condensor mics. From what I'd gathered thus far, ribbons seem to give people a more "real" representation of their source. At least they seem to give people a more satisfying representation of their source, at least in the budget arena.

I don't want to hijack this thread too much so maybe I'll start another on the subject.
 
The problem with that format is the dude that asks the question doesn't know the answer. So how are they supposed to pick the best answer :confused: :rolleyes:
 
Tadpui said:
Really? That's surprising to me. Although I've known about the existence of ribbon mics for quite a while now, I'm just now starting to pay attention to them lately. I don't know much about how they work, or how they otherwise compare to condensor mics. From what I'd gathered thus far, ribbons seem to give people a more "real" representation of their source. At least they seem to give people a more satisfying representation of their source, at least in the budget arena.
Click to expand...

Which source? In the budget arena on classical guitar, I would say no way. From what I see, the R121 looks nice (go for the R122 actually, that has unbeatable SNR for a ribbon). Maybe the new ATs. Those aren't cheap mics. The ribbon I heard in use on stage was the Fathead, very boxy (I see that the Lundahl version has a higher mid bump than stock, rather interesting). But that left the highs free for the lead guit's SM81, so it worked.

Most cheap ribbons take a nosedive above 10kHz, and with low-quality transformers it doesn't help. Stage volumes will require mics to be really close to the instrument. For any fig-8 pattern, that means a whopping heap o' proximity effect, which is generally not the desired goal.

I think that people that like cheap ribbons want to suppress high end while still maintaining good transient response. That is a noble goal on sibilant vocals, cheap cymbals, screechy guitars, etc. But I am not averse to using low pass EQ on a condenser either.

That said, I would not want to do that on classical guitar live. So you can spend $1K+ on the Royer or buy a $100 AT condenser mic and get the same result.

My personal favorite is the bluegrass bands who want to use one mic . . . most are using an LDC (even though an SDC would work better), but I've seen one or two with a ribbon and some members attempting to sing/play 90 degrees off axis :D
 
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