dob - i must admit that i sometimes do the "hedging your bets" type of recording myself. sometimes you find yourself needing to track a new kind of setup, or something familiar but you only have one chance to get it right. by using more than one type of mic arrangement you can compensate for what works and what doesn't. the last remote gig i did was a flute quartet in a very large church - i had very definite ideas about what i wanted to do when i first walked in and listened to them, but as i listened more to the ambient noise, i realized that i had some obtrusive heavy truck noises mixed in there even with a high pass filter, so i knew i might run into trouble if i used just my normal blumlein pair of ribbons. so i did a set using both the ribbons at around 8-10 feet and an ORTF of small condensers at about 4 feet, then i had them play the entire set over again using individual close mics. i wound up using the close mic setup for the final mix - not what i had originally thought would be the right thing.
to correct phase problems, you need preamps or a mixer that have phase reversal switches. you pull up your mics one at a time listening for consistency inthe low end - if you pull up a mic and the sound gets thinner instead of louder, you probably are having phase cancellation issues, so you flip the phase on that mic and listen again. phase problems can be very problematic if you dont have much experience, and are one of themain reasons labels like delos prefer minimal mic techniques.
