CSNY Engineer Cloning

L

Livingstone

New member
I want my recording sound to be like Crosby Stills Nash & Young's acoustic recordings... i.e.: Simple Man, 4+20, Helplessly Hoping, (there version of) Blackbird... kind of sound.

Does anyone know what mics and what pre's were used for these recordings? And what would be the closest thing to it for a home studio?

My setup at home right now is:

Mics: Rode NT2
SP B1
Sm 58
Peavey PVM 480

Software:
Cooledit Pro 2.0
Waves gold bundle

Hardware:
Mackie 1202 VLZ
Sound Blaster Live


I have around $3000 Canadian so that's like half American
Which comes up tooooo........
$1500
To spend on gear

I'm looking at getting the Sm7 mic, the Aardvark 24/96 sound card, and the Studio Projects VTB-1 per.
But of course, before I make any purchase, I'm opening up the floor for suggestions and do's and don'ts.
I'm just looking at getting as close to the CSNY acoustic sound as possible.
 
I guess knowbody knows anything about getting good sound these days. Everyones interested in electonic in your face condencer music. :) YES?
 
Well, many of the people on this board were either in diapers or not born when some of these records were made, but these are the givens. :D Everything was tracked to tape. Neumann mics were used a lot. Ever see the photo of Stephen Stills recording an acoustic? There are like five mics or more all around the guitar! So they experimented. I have no idea about the pres but I imagine there were some top notch limiters being used.

As for the guitars, fresh light guage strings and a great sounding Martin D45 would help. They also used some open tunings, which gave the guitar that loose sound. I have no clue beyond that, but maybe you can cook up your own recipe from some of this.
 
I've seen some pictures of them "CSNY" in the studio recording vocals on ball mics (longer body ball mics and i didn't see the Neumann symbols or word on it, there was a different name on them) My goal right now is the use of dynamic mics like the Sm7
on vocals instead of condensers. My dad did an album in 73, and all they used in the studio for vocals was dynamic mics and condensers for instruments. I think the dynamic mics where a great denominator in the sound produced back then. The theory is "Dynamics is to Condensers Like Real to Real is to Digital like Records are to CD's"

So it's been three months since I posted this thread and I've got
the Sm7 now and it's responding exactly like I thought it would. (I bought it all do to the fact that i read all it's reviews on this site!:)) I have it hooked to my Mackey board, which is not good enough. NOT ENOUGH POWER! I'm pushing sound passed the "U" and i don't like doing that to mics. the only other down side to this mic is that the high's are not as clean as i want them to be. It's not bad but it could be better. And lastly the mic has a slight hiss that gives it that real-to-real feel. But a little too much at times when vocals are quiet. I think this is do to my NO POWER Mackey board. Nonetheless just a bit of adjustments and this mic is warm and golden.

Now I'm running the board to my Computer Which I record at 48000 Hz/32bit(Cooledit Pro 2). And all i have to do is give the vocals a little eq, a little (C4 Waves Gold) compression and a hint of verb and the mic creates a friendly, inviting, sound. Which is what I’m aiming for. And the mic is also friendly to tweak. The sound doesn't get ugly when you work with it. I got ride of My NT2, which did get ugly when you tried to eq or compress it. Of course I'm going to be putting some samples up for your comments. I'll post that up as soon as that's ready.
 
Seems I read on some of their songs they may have gathered around a single Neumann for the vocals.
Wayne
 
I'm almost positive that their 1st album was made with just one (really good) mic. They also 'stacked' the vocals alot.

bob
 
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