Condenser Mic advice - Acoustic Guitar

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SilverfoxUK

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Hi guys,

I'm looking for some budget mics to record Acoustic guitar. I normally use an Audio Technica vocal condenser but not great.

Anyway, I've been looking for something like the Oktava mk012 or MXL 603/4 but they seem to be discontinued everywhere in UK. such a pain.

So, now I have come across the AKG perception 150/170 and can get 2 of them for £80 YES £80!!

can anyone just let me know that for that price that I can't go wrong?

or am I missing another option? (I am also looking at the Rode M3)

Thanks in advance,

Sam.
 
apparently the octava's are really good but i've never used them...

what audio technica mic do you use?
 
I am using 2 Rode NT5's for recording acoustics. They are in a X-Y pattern pointed at the 12th fret. I've experimented with other mics and configurations and for me this gives the best results. I purchased a matching pair on ebay for $269.
 
If you're right into budget, have a look at Behringer's B5 small diaphragm condenser or similar. Cheap and cheerful. Swapable cardoid and omni capsules so it's quite versatile. Omni's sound nice on acoustic guitars if there's not anything else going on in the room. I like small diaphragm condensers on acoustic guitars.
 
yeah budget: check out the behringer c-2s. they sound suprisingly good, but they just came out with the updated ones: the c-4s... probably got rid of the ground noise.
 
The 3060 should give you a great acoustic track, work on position and technique
 
This UK shop has the 604 for £58.99, best I can tell:
http://www.turnkey.co.uk/product.php?itemid=2049

I have a 604 and it has decent sound. However, it does not come close to the quality of sound I get with my Peluso cemc6 (US$290) or sm81 ($325).

I have not heard the akg 170, but I saw a review at sweetwater.com that said it's warmer sounding than the NT5, which is itself considered darker than some of the cheap SDCs out there.

You need to carefully consider the self-noise and noise floor of SDCs for recording quiet sources like acoustic guitar. I looked at the 170's specs and the self-noise is <21 db (A-wt) which is not too good. But the sensitivity is only 12 mV/Pa so that gives it a noise floor of -109 db which is only fair, compared to the slightly better noise floor of -110.5 db for the 604.

I heard a shootout of the NT5 (-114 db noise floor) against M-Audio Pulsar II (-113 db noise floor), and sometimes I think I liked the Pulsar II better. The Pulsar is definitely brighter than the NT5, so it might not work on a shrill instrument. A pair of Pulsars is about $300, might be in your range.

But if it were me, I would probably forego the pair right now and buy one cemc6, then save for another one later. Then you would have a pair of high quality SDCs for acoustic guitar. Noise floor on my cemc6 is -118 db and the sm81 is -121 db, much better than that of any mic listed above.

FYI, here is a list of mics (LDC and SDC) ranked best to worst by noise floor:
http://www.ffts.com/mic.noise.floor.comparison.htm .

Noise floor was computed using mic sensitivity and self-noise based on:
http://www.rane.com/note148.html
 
OK, I have to interject that calculating the absolute noise floor of a mic makes *no* sense at all without relating it to sensitivity. Seriously, the only time you would care is if you were concerned about the noise floor of a relatively noisy preamp.

I can manipulate the absolute noise floor in a mic to be just about anything I want (within the limits of physics), using gain or an output transformer or even a simple resistive pad. Take the SM81, for example: it has a low absolute noise floor because it has an output transformer that drops both signal together with the noise from the front of the mic amp. So? It has -45dBV/Pa sensitivity, which means that its signal-to-noise ratio is 76dB (without checking Shure's specs, but that sounds right). That's OK but not great, absolute noise notwithstanding.

Unless you are using a particularly noisy preamp, all things being equal (which they aren't, but that's another post), you want the mic with the larger signal-to-noise ratio.

Here's the thing: let's say you have two otherwise identical mics with different sensitivity but the same signal-to-noise ratio, and you're using a noisy preamp. Which mic would you prefer, the one with the higher absolute noise floor, or the lower absolute noise floor? Think about that for a minute.

Actually just reread this part of the Rane note you linked:

Condenser Mics

1. Find the Noise rating on the microphone date sheet (this is stated as Equivalent Noise Level, Self-Noise, Equivalent Noise SPL, or Noise Floor), expressed in dB SPL, A-weighted.
2. Locate the microphone's Sensitivity rating on the data sheet.
3. Using Table 3, find the microphone Sensitivity rating down the left side.
4. Find the Noise rating in dB SPL, A-weighted along the top of Table 3.
5. Move along the Sensitivity rating row and move down the Noise column until they intersect and note the number -- this is the output noise converted to dBu, A-weighted.
6. Find the EIN (equivalent input noise) in dBu rating on the preamplifier's data sheet.
7. Reduce the preamp's EIN by 5 dB to approximate A-weighting.
8. Compare the two to see if the proposed preamplifier degrades the mic noise appreciably.
Click to expand...

Pay special attention to #8!
 
mshilarious said:
OK, I have to interject that calculating the absolute noise floor of a mic makes *no* sense at all without relating it to sensitivity. Seriously, the only time you would care is if you were concerned about the noise floor of a relatively noisy preamp.
Click to expand...

I stand corrected. I was thinking about noisy preamps when recording quiet sources when I posted this, but I failed to mention that the calculated absolute noise floor is only really useful in comparison with that of a preamp.
 
gehauser said:
This UK shop has the 604 for £58.99, best I can tell:
http://www.turnkey.co.uk/product.php?itemid=2049

I have a 604 and it has decent sound. However, it does not come close to the quality of sound I get with my Peluso cemc6 (US$290) or sm81 ($325).

I have not heard the akg 170, but I saw a review at sweetwater.com that said it's warmer sounding than the NT5, which is itself considered darker than some of the cheap SDCs out there.

You need to carefully consider the self-noise and noise floor of SDCs for recording quiet sources like acoustic guitar. I looked at the 170's specs and the self-noise is <21 db (A-wt) which is not too good. But the sensitivity is only 12 mV/Pa so that gives it a noise floor of -109 db which is only fair, compared to the slightly better noise floor of -110.5 db for the 604.

I heard a shootout of the NT5 (-114 db noise floor) against M-Audio Pulsar II (-113 db noise floor), and sometimes I think I liked the Pulsar II better. The Pulsar is definitely brighter than the NT5, so it might not work on a shrill instrument. A pair of Pulsars is about $300, might be in your range.

But if it were me, I would probably forego the pair right now and buy one cemc6, then save for another one later. Then you would have a pair of high quality SDCs for acoustic guitar. Noise floor on my cemc6 is -118 db and the sm81 is -121 db, much better than that of any mic listed above.

FYI, here is a list of mics (LDC and SDC) ranked best to worst by noise floor:
http://www.ffts.com/mic.noise.floor.comparison.htm .

Noise floor was computed using mic sensitivity and self-noise based on:
http://www.rane.com/note148.html
Click to expand...

Listening to these samples, the Rode NT5's don't sound dark to me. The Peluso sounds brittle:

http://www.gearaudition.com/microphones.php
 
The problem is- clips don't tell you anything about a microphone. They tell you much more about the recording engineer and his preferences, his room, his preamps, the guitarist he was recording, and the guitar itself. Good engineering will make most mics sound good. Bad engineering will make any mic sound bad. Then it is compressed to an MP3, which degrades detail.

If you have a good guitarist, with a great instrument, in a good room, and pretty much any mic or mics that are well placed, good recordings are likely to result, There's a really good article in this month's Acoustic Guitar magazine on mic'ing acoustic guitar that's well worth reading.

OK, that said, I'll do what you asked for in the first place. At that price, with the AKG's, you can't go wrong. They are perfectly good mics for your purposes. I would try the tube mic about 30cm off from the 12th fret, and the Perceptions (or any other small diaphragm mics) in coincedent (X-Y) configuration, backed off 1-2 meters, in a good soft room. If there is a pickup in the guitar, run that to a separate channel and cut everything over about 200hz. Then start with the stereo pair, and experiment by mixing in various amounts of the close mic and the pickup to add some bass. If it sounds muddy, reverse the phase on the close mic and/or the pickup.

This is the hard part. Good recorded acoustic guitar is much more about the room, the guitar, the performance, and mic placement than it is about what mics you use. There is no magic wand mic that will make your guitar sound good, or even the way it really sounds. That is achieved through a lengthy process of experimenting with mic placement and EQ. However, the better the room, the guitar, and the performance are, the easier it is to make it sound good. Good luck-Richie
 
The Nady CM90s are on blow out on MF for 39.99. These are also a mxl 603 copy whic means you can get it modded by micheal joly of Octavamod fame to sound way better than you'd ever imagine. I'm ordering 2 tomorrow as a matter of fact. Buy inexpensively now for a decent sounding sdc and send them to Micheal Joly when you ahve the funds and they will be keepers!
 
Thanks a lot! What does the mod do and how much is it? Any other suggestions? I used an Audio Technica AT4040 before and it worked okay but I have nothing to compare that to.
 
Is the mod something I would need for just acoustic stuff?
 
NO, But then again you dont need clothes either, but its nice to have em!
 
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