Condenser for acoustic guitar and vox?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Royalty
  • Start date Start date
R

Royalty

New member
Hey everyone, I have been searching around for condenser mics for a while now and I still haven't found the perfect one yet. I know that large diaphragm are best for vocals and small diaphragm for acoustic instruments. I play the ukulele, guitar, piano/keyboard and also sing. So, if I were to purchase 1 mic for all of the above, should I get a large or small diaphragm? I'm looking to spend around $200... $300 if the difference between mic quality is huge.. I always hear mixed things about different mics though. There's no place around me to looks or test out mics either. Ive heard it 20000, go to GuitarCenter and look at mics. There is no guitar center around me haha. I'm looking for opinions. thanks

Here are some I have been looking at, I heard these mics are good for vox and guitar.

1. Rode NT-1A
2. Audio-Technica AT2050
3. Audio-Technica AT4040
4. AKG Perception 200 and 420
5. MXL 4000
6. Blue Bluebird
7. Your opinions
 
Last edited:
In my limited experience, SDCs tend to do worse things to vocals than LDCs do to acoustic instruments (strictly, it's the SDC *not* doing nice things to the vox rather than doing bad things to it) - that's a pretty broad statement of course. Theoretically, if your voice sounded awesome with a lot of its original transient detail intact, then it could be the other way around. Still every time I've tried to record anyone's voice with a SDC, I pretty quickly switched back to a LDC. The SDC mics make the voices sound too in-your-face and kind of irritating.

I sometimes use LDCs for acoustic guitar - for tracks where the acoustic should be in the background more this can be good because the slower response of the large diaphragm cuts some detail from the guitar

There are some "medium" sized condenser mics, such a the AT 4033 - I like that particular one on instruments, but often not on vox. If you get a chance to try one, it would definitely be worth checking out.

I've got the AT4040 and like it. I've used a Blue Baby Bottle for both vox and acoustic guitar on the same song and liked that, too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top