Jamming through mic with studio monitors = feedback

[ringfeder]

Recently I got sick of playing with headphones so I bought a pair of studio monitors and started jamming with my acoustic guitar along with drum/bass loops in Studio One. I loved it and decided it would be awesome if my guitar had some reverb so I set up a condenser mic, plugged it into my audio interface and as soon as I arm the track I get a feedback loop. I googled around and tried eq'ing out the offending frequencies whcih worked to some extent but you could always hear it threatening to spike again. I was just wondering if someone had come across the same issue and had a logical fix that I'm missing? Maybe I'm the only one that wants to add an artificial reverb tail to my playing to make me sound better

 

[miroslav]

Well...it sounds like the mic and monitors are creating a feedback loop, since the guitar track (with reverb) is playing back through the monitors and getting picked back up again by the same mic.

EQ is not the solution.
Try adjusting the position of the mic relative to the monitors...AND...lower the volume of the monitors so the mic doesn't pic them up as much...but the potential for a feedback loop is still there.
That's why headphones work...or since you're just jamming, get a soundhole pickup for the guitar and don't use the mic.

 

[Toastedgoat]

Face the mic away from the monitors keep it in cardioid, keep the volume low on the monitors. Roll the low end out of the monitors.

 

[RFR]

Another old trick is to reverse the polarity on the monitors. Make em out of phase. Just flip the hot with the ground on one spkr. Of course, it only works on passive monitors.
I suppose it could be done on actives but you'd have to rewire an xlr cable.

 

[ringfeder]

Well...it sounds like the mic and monitors are creating a feedback loop, since the guitar track (with reverb) is playing back through the monitors and getting picked back up again by the same mic.

EQ is not the solution.
Try adjusting the position of the mic relative to the monitors...AND...lower the volume of the monitors so the mic doesn't pic them up as much...but the potential for a feedback loop is still there.
That's why headphones work...or since you're just jamming, get a soundhole pickup for the guitar and don't use the mic.

You know the guitar has a built in pickup and it never occured to me. I'll try that. Thanks to everyone for replying.

 

[ashcat_lt]

Another old trick is to reverse the polarity on the monitors. Make em out of phase. Just flip the hot with the ground on one spkr. Of course, it only works on passive monitors.
I suppose it could be done on actives but you'd have to rewire an xlr cable.

If you're inverting both, there's usually a switch for polarity on every track in the DAW that's a lot easier than rewiring your speakers and the only possible solution with most active monitors. It sometimes can help, but sometimes just moves the feedback to another frequency.

If you flip polarity of just one of a pair of speakers and put the microphone exactly centered between them, it's more likely to help, and can be pretty effective at cancelling out bleed from the monitors, but it's never perfect.

Pointing a cardioid away from the speakers is of course step one, but then a guitar is a big flat surface that very effective reflects kind of exactly the frequencies that are most likely to feedback in most situations, so you have to be careful with that. I've seen live situations where we couldn't get enough gain before feedback until the vocalist took off his hat.

If you're just going for reverb, then just have the reverb in the monitors and add a good bit of predelay.

Course, the pickup is an even better solution, but the guitar itself will feedback if you get it loud enough.