Having trouble with an acoustic guitar track--Help needed

brandon1120

New member
Hi all,

I'm mostly an amateur at recording, but though I've recorded myself off and on over the past ten years, I've never ran into the issue I'm having with an acoustic guitar track.

In my studio headphones (an audio technica pair) the guitar sounds fine, even though I've not gone through mastering it as much as I want to. But when I play the track on my iphone's mic or with bluetooth headphones, the high-end notes on the e string get this really harsh, pinging sound. This happened through itunes, google's player, and dropbox's player.

Originally I thought a couple things, such as there being a phase issue or something with the track being reduced to mono weirdly in certain contexts, since I might've recorded it in two mics (I honestly can't remember, its almost been a year).


Any pointers? I've attached the track. I hope its not past redeeming and I can do something with EQ, compression, etc. If it's helpful, I use Adobe Audition as my DAW.

Thanks in advance!

Also, sorry if this is the wrong please to post. I just found this site the other day.

Brandon
 

Attachments

  • Fealties, acoustic guitar, march 30.mp3
    4.4 MB · Views: 51
I can clearly hear the ping coming in Media Player with headphones. It sounds like a mechanical buzz of some type. Playing around with a notch in the EQ, it seems to be centered somewhere around 42-4300Hz.

I applied this EQ and it seemed to cut it out somewhat without completely destroying the tone of the guitar, but its noticeable if you compare to the original. See if it helps. It might give you a starting point.
 

Attachments

  • Fealties notch.jpg
    Fealties notch.jpg
    40.9 KB · Views: 22
  • Fealites - Acoutic with notch .mp3
    5.8 MB · Views: 27
I agree that "almost triangle-like" pinging is pretty obvious.

I would go back to the mixing stage, or is that what you mean? (It sounds more like a rhythm guitar track than a solo piece, to me.) The phasing could be from two mics, or duplicating the track and applying different FX, though do you mean you've lost the original project this started from, or is this all you have? I also heard the odd wandering and "phasing" (or whatever that was) going on. Do you at least have the pre-master track?

It wasn't ready for mastering probably. Loudness for this MP3 is almost -19dB LUFS, which is not anything commercial, so I'm not sure what you've done to get it to this state, i.e., what you started with, and what FX have been applied.
 
Also before you get too crazy with the sound of this guitar recording.

How does it fit into the song?

Sometimes recordings sound awful on their own and then they fit in a mix somehow.

If it is just the guitar and a vocal then yes, fix it now.

It also may be the placement of the mic. Point it less towards the strumming and higher strings, maybe that will help as well.

Something to be learned here is that different headphones color sound in different ways.
 
1) Yes, some weird phasiness going on here.

2) Cotton or felt under the strings above the nut. That sounds like your high E string vibrating between the nut and the tuning peg. Happens if you're (for example) using 10's or 11's when the nut was cut for 12's.
 
1) Yes, some weird phasiness going on here.

2) Cotton or felt under the strings above the nut. That sounds like your high E string vibrating between the nut and the tuning peg. Happens if you're (for example) using 10's or 11's when the nut was cut for 12's.

Oh man....I think I just figured out what's wrong with my old Ovation acoustic!! Thanks!!!
 
Thanks for everyone's advice so far.

TalismanRich, I think you're right about that area being where the ping is. Your eq work did reduce it, and I did some additional cuts in that area, but it still seems present. I think I'll need to keep fiddling with it. Anyone else think any specific frequencies might be the issue as well?

As far as the use of the track, well, that's why I'm wanting to fix this. This track has no drums, and this guitar track formed the basis for the energy of the song. I added bass as well, but I think the vocals really match this energy, so if this track isn't usuable in some fashion, I'd have to re-record the whole thing...

I'm considering layering another guitar track, probably a relatively clean or crunchy electric one, to try to flesh out the song if I have to cut a lot of the acoustic's frequencies out.

I don't think its necessarily a string size issue. It was recorded with a fairly new martin that I bought blemished (just a crack along the pinhole), and so the strings shouldn't have been too large, since they, according to Guitar Center, were the ones that came with it originally).

One last thing: some of you seem to think its a phase issue possibly. Can anyone suggest tutorials on how I might fix this?
 
The phase issue likely isn't related to the ping. And the ping can still be the string above the nut. Try dampening that to see if the ping stops. The phase problem is mic position related.
 
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