mics vs. pick-up vs. feedback

N

NationalSandwic

New member
hello
hope i can get advice here.
i've a very nice classical guitar that cost me a fortune and that i love dearly. i want to use it for live performances, and am not sure how to do this best. if i put a pick-up in, i am firstly worried about having to cut or drill or in anyway damage the guitar itself. i am then worried about feedback. i sometimes play very softly and sparsely, sometimes i play very loud and allow long pauses to listen to the resonance & harmonics.
i'm not sure what non-invasive pickup options there are that will give me the richness and clarity i want.
i'm then not sure if/how/which microphone might work at a live performance, also giving me richness & clarity. someone suggested just performing with a sm57.
i have been using a transducer pickup (for recording purposes and for one performance) but it's EXTREMELY strong in the high ends, so fret & nail sounds are aggressive. for recording i generally have to exaggerate my playing to emphasise the bass and/or eq the hell out of it. in the one performance, i didn't have feedback, but i kept the system really low. plus it was a specific occasion, outdoors, tiny group, so can't equate it to playing in a club.
advice please? :confused:
thanks,
anthony
 
If it was me I probably wouldn't not 'build' a pickup into it. Probably find a good mic, put it on a stand and play into that
 
How loud do you have to be? You haven't given us a lot of information.

If you're playing this guitar in a band situation, you're really not going to have success being heard with just a microphone - unless it's an all-acoustic band.

If the pickup you have is a piezo, are you using a preamp designed for use with piezos? Piezos, IIRC, require a really high impedance to sound right, and will give a quacky sound without it.

I'd suggest talking to a good luthier about the pickup options. That person will tell you what he can do with respect to "invading" the guitar and getting you a good sound.

For microphones on a guitar: An SM57 is not a good mic for amplifying classical guitar. It has to placed close, which will overemphasize low frequencies. You really want ONE mic which you can place far enough away to catch the entire top of the guitar. I have not found anything better than the AEA R84, a ribbon mic with figure-of-eight pattern and a long "reach", meaning it is sensitive from pretty far away. I like the figure-of-eight pattern because it is so good at rejecting sound from the sides. If you don't want to spend that kind of $$, you might look for a budget condensor mic that can do figure-of-eight.

Or, hell, the lowly-regarded AKG C1000 can sound pretty good on a guitar if you're not overly concerned with feedback.
 
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