Recording acoustic guitar

[Phosphene]

Is a Jecklin Disk made of a specific material?

 

[krash]

Is a Jecklin Disk made of a specific material?

?? well it's a specific thing... but you can make it from a selection of materials that will work.

Mine is 1/4" mahogany plywood with 1" of acoustic foam on either side. I made another one once that was 5/16" solid pine with deep carpet on either side. Both work well, the carpet/pine one sounded brighter (obviously) and more upfront in the mids.

 

[lpdeluxe]

Well, when **I** record with a SDC I get less room than with a LDC! Probably has to do with the positioning, polar pattern and sensitivity.

 

[chessrock]

For double-track acoustic guitars, play one track facing one side, the other track facing the other side, or record two guitarists at once with them each facing each other and the Jecklin Disk in between.

That's actually a really good idea that works extremely well. As long as the room accoustics are exceptional, and the performance is good and loud. As any weaknesses in your accoustic environment will be magnified times a thousand . . . not to mention the unusually high level of hiss or any self noise you'll likely encounter if the pefromance is in the least bit quiet.

But yea, if you can pull it off, the stereo image is exceptional -- particularly on headphones.

 

[lilcapn]

combos

i like 2 SDC's -- pro37r's & mc012's is all i got in that dept, a pr of each, sound really good. the mc012's i find a bit too sensitive to the wind created by strumming sometimes tho.

also, as mentioned by many above, a combo of a small guy on the neck up close and a big guy (or medium guy -- 4033 e.g.) pointed at the front of the body between the bridge and the edge of the guitar, a couple feet away from the guitar.

 

[krash]

That's actually a really good idea that works extremely well. As long as the room accoustics are exceptional, and the performance is good and loud. As any weaknesses in your accoustic environment will be magnified times a thousand . . . not to mention the unusually high level of hiss or any self noise you'll likely encounter if the pefromance is in the least bit quiet.

But yea, if you can pull it off, the stereo image is exceptional -- particularly on headphones.

The biggest thing when using a Jecklin Disk to record in less-than-great rooms is to get the thing a lot closer to the source than you'd have considered otherwise. Same goes for any omni mic recording. You really often must get it closer to the source than you would have thought. To record fingerstyle acoustic guitar with a Jecklin Disk you pretty much have to have the "disk" edge less than a couple of inches away from the strings of the guitar, which feels weird for the player because there's big thing there.

If you get too far away from the mic, regardless of the mic, then you will run into these issues (excessive room:source ratio, excessive self noise, etc.). For the double-track technique, I typically am RIGHT ON the mics, just a few inches away if it's a fingerstyle track. Double-track strumming rhythm tracks, you can be a foot or so away and it works fine. Jecklin Disk is really no different than other techniques in terms of proximity and room artifacts. It does not magnify weaknesses of the acoustic environment, certainly not compared with any other miking using an omni mic.

The biggest drawback to using a Jecklin Disk to record is the size and awkwardness of the thing when positioning it. It's heavy on the end of a boom stand, with two mics and a square foot of plywood. The second biggest drawback is you will use 2x as many tracks for everything since you are almost always recording in stereo. Just like with any other stereo technique, you have to think really carefully about sound field placement BEFORE you record the track, you can't pan it. But it sounds killer!

 

[chessrock]

Jecklin Disk is really no different than other techniques in terms of proximity and room artifacts. It does not magnify weaknesses of the acoustic environment, certainly not compared with any other miking using an omni mic.

Except for the fact that you're using two omni mics, and one is pointed off and away from the source a ways.

Biggest drawback is the stereo image doesn't always translate as well to loudspeakers as they do to headphones.

 

[chessrock]

Jecklin Disk is really no different than other techniques in terms of proximity and room artifacts. It does not magnify weaknesses of the acoustic environment, certainly not compared with any other miking using an omni mic.

Except for the fact that you're using two omni mics, and one is pointed off and away from the source a ways.

Biggest drawback is the stereo image doesn't always translate as well to loudspeakers as they do to headphones.

 

[Flatpicker]

well....color i would say would come from the fact that large diaphrams high end is a little different then a sd's high end. but yeah....large diaphram mics pick up ALOT more low end then sd...

Sorry for the late reply, but I’ve been on holiday this week…

No, I don’t mean the low-end is louder, I meant what I said: they seem to expand certain lower-mid frequencies. I use the term “expand” as the opposite of “compress”. In other words, these “frequencies” are simply more dynamic then the source. The “certain lower-mid frequencies” I mentioned does not include the entire low end, and the “frequencies” seem to vary a bit from mic to mic.

Now maybe this isn’t the absolute rule for LDC and SDC mics, but I’ve noticed it on mine which are all modified Chinese/Russian mics. Some of the “un-modified” ones I’ve heard are too muddy to tell.