Help with recording acoustic guitar

[Jesus_Ranch]

Hi everyone,

We're using
Seagull Acoustic Guitar
Fender Acoustic Guitar
Audio-Technica Dynamic Mic
Sony Dynamic Mic
GNX 2 Guitar Effects Panel
Creative Audigy 2 ZS Platnium
Sonar 4

Basically our sh*t sucks. We're trying to get a decent sound out of our guitars because when we record, it lacks low end and we just pick up the room's acoustics.

Can you help us get something okay out of our sound?
We're not trying to produce an album or something, just get some decent tracks down to listen to and work on.

Thanks in advance.

 

[ecktronic]

Usually a good condensor mic oe two (or even three) is needed as with a room with good acoustics and a nice bit of wood under the guitar player to get floor reflections.

Im not too sure what those mics are like but in this case i would place the mic(s) as close to the guitar as possible. When playing guitar try not to move.

This means you should not get any room sound or very little, so you can add some reverb on later. I heard that Seagul guitars are pretty good although i havnt tried one, but if they sound like they have lo end when playing them normally then you should be albe to get lo end when recording. Place the mic closer to the hole rather than the neck to hole join area. Try out differnt mic positions, but make sure you close mics as close as possible to avoid bad room ambience.

Here is song i recorded with a Takamine guitar and a really really bad microphone. It doesnt have a name and cost around £20!!
"SO DISTANT"
http://www.soundclick.com/archamedies

Good luck.

 

[scrubs]

How are you running things right now? I would start with the better of your two mics pointed at about the 12th fret of the acoustic, very close to the guitar (6 in or so). Run that directly into the audigy (no processing) and record it into sonar. You'll need a lot of gain for most dynamic mics, so whatever preamp the audigy has, you'll probably have to crank it pretty high. Try several different mic placements. If the audigy has mulitple mic inputs, put one mic at the 12th fret and one behind the bridge (again, close). That's probably the best you'll be able to do with that setup. As ecktronic suggests, you'll eventually want to move up to some condenser mics, a good preamp, and a better soundcard for recording.

 

[partsofmarc]

I would either get a pair of SD condensers like the C4s, the NT5s, or 603s or one large condenser like a C1,NT1, or VG67. A decent preamp would help a whole lot as well.

 

[formerlyfzfile]

One trick is to have the guitarist sit about 45 degrees to a reflective surface ...with the guitar body making a "corner" with the wall ... and put one mic in between. Adjust the distances to taste but can add early reflections that really fill out a single mic and can give a stereoness.

Should work with any mic with a little tweaking.

-mike

 

[smtcharlie]

Chessrock once said that using both a condensor and a dynamic works well for acoustic (especially when it is solo acoustic stuff). I find this great, great advice. I use a SM-57 and a Octava MC012 and have pretty good results.

The sound of my guitar itself, on the other hand......

 

[ecktronic]

One trick is to have the guitarist sit about 45 degrees to a reflective surface ...with the guitar body making a "corner" with the wall ... and put one mic in between. Adjust the distances to taste but can add early reflections that really fill out a single mic and can give a stereoness.

Should work with any mic with a little tweaking.

-mike

Interesting idea sitting facing a corner, must try that some time, but you cant get any sort of "stereoness" with one mic no matter how hard you try! You might get some depth from the short delays (room reflections).

 

[formerlyfzfile]

Yeah stereoness was not the best term but try it and compare with another single mic'd track panned center and you can get a much wider/bigger/fuller mono sound.

Even though you can make it work with any mic it does work best with a mic that has a wide cardiod, an omni or figure 8, ... or combine with another mic.

Wooden interior doors work really good for this. Different reflective surfaces will yield different sounds.

I also like using dis-similar mic pairs for stero recording acoustics.

If you have multiple guitar tracks and some various flavored mics ... i.e. some brighter some darker sounding..... you can combine a bright and a dark mic for the guitars and then pan the tracks around (Guit 1 bright mic R/ Guit 1 dark mic L and then Guit 2 dark mic R/ Guit 2 bright mic L) to give more or less separation and space to the multiple guitars.

If Sony and AT mic are the only mics you can get, experiment and listen to where each works the best (may be different on different instrumaents) and experiment, experiment, experiment.

[qoute]We're trying to get a decent sound out of our guitars because when we record, it lacks low end and we just pick up the room's acoustics.[/qoute]

The above may help with the room acoustics (sort of) .... or least add some ambiance .... as for the low end issue .... you could be limited by your mics. If you can get a mic that has better low end pickup ... like a condenser or even a good dynamic like a sennheiser 421 ... OR a less expensive "bass/kick" mic like an Audio Technica Pro25 or ATM25 you can use it to help capture more bottom end out of the guitars.

Or .... pad the acoustic tracks with doubling bass guitar (mixed quietly under) or even some synth/keyboard pads. ..... doesnt have to be dramatic but could fill some of the low end void out.

Also .... beg, borrow, steal some guitars with more bottom end.

Most of all ..... make sure the guitars sound as good as they can. Newer strings and adjusted properly, etc.

-mike

 

[XLR]

IME playing in a corner or towards a close wall can help strengthen the lows and low mids on ac gtr. You've got to finesse it though re exactly where you sit, the angle of the gtr towards the wall, the position and angle of the mic(s). However you set up in the room, you'll probably get the best response from the dynamic mics if you keep them very close (1-6 inches) especially if you were previously getting too thin of a sound. As already mentioned the neck/body joint is the best place to start, adding a bridge mic if you want to pan them L and R for a more complex sound. Moving the mic's an inch, or the angle a few degrees can make a huge difference, so you've got to experiment. Record it clean and process it in the computer.

Tim