Acoustic Guitar

[TelePaul]

Okay guys I'm trying to nail mic placement and technique; I know theres no such thing as a universally good acoustic tone. But I was thinking you could give me some ideas. Basically I have Cubase SE3 and a tascam US 122. I have a Martin D 15, a Sennheiser e816s dynamic and a studio projects CS 1 condenser. I record in a conservatory (ugh) with wooden floors (ugh again) so i think i might have to hang blankets or something. Im kinda into fingerpicking and i have a rack compressor which i use as an effects send and return into the Tascam insert. Cheers for your help.

 

[slidey]

generally I would reach straight for the condensor of the group & place it at a 45 degree angle pointing at where the neck joins the body, maybe 1/2-1 feet away

OR try the 816 at the same angle (maybe a bit closer) & try the condensor at the bottom of the guitar

OR use the 816 in the same place & point the condensor up the neck towards the headstock at an angle of 45 degrees

 

[Micter]

I would use the condensor Mic pointed right at the 12th fret with about 2 1/2 : 1 compression. I usually will use 2 small diaphragm condesor mics one at the 12th fret and the other pointed at the bridge for stereo imaging but withour two mics of the same type and two pres of the same type it's difficult to get a good stereo acoustic sound. I would also double track a mono signal to fatten things up and add natural chorusing.

 

[TelePaul]

Pres

I assume pres is pre-amps....i think theyre built into the sound card. Maybe i should go with another condenser. But thanks for your advice. Whattya think about the environment? Its abd right, the glass conservatory and wooden floor?

 

[XLR]

There are commonly used mic placements for acoustic guitar that are discussed here every week and you can read about them with the Search function, but it all comes down to experimentation. Room sound is the biggest factor next to source quality. Wood floors can be a good thing as long as you handle reflections. Glass walls might be a problem but it's easy to set up makeshift gobos to handle that.

Tim

 

[slidey]

There are commonly used mic placements for acoustic guitar that are discussed here every week and you can read about them with the Search function

yeah, but don't you just love repeating yourself.........................

I've got a drum riser, which doubles as a stage for the house concerts we run...............anyhoo I digress. The riser is made up of 3 tables, one of which I use to set the player/myself on to record acoustic sometimes. I've also faced a large chunk of wood (a huge wardrobe in my case). mic'd up as normal (define normal to taste) but with another (LDC in my case) above my head facing the wardrobe

that sounded pretty wicked. The room was a nice sounding bedroom

 

[XLR]

I never compress acoustic guitar during tracking. I often use a very small amount of split-band compression on the range under 800 Hz after it's tracked though. Personally, I don't like the sound of broadband compression on acoustic guitar.

Tim