99% of all the music I record is Bluegrass. It's taken a lot of experimenting and time to get as far along as I have with it... Anything acoustic is harder to record, at least for me.
Right or wrong, here's how I record Bluegrass bands:
You're using an electric bass, so you might want to ask some else for advice on that, but if you ever use an upright bass, here's what I do: I use
a Rode NT5 positioned just above the treble sound hole, away from the bass about 1 foot. I try not to directly record the "F holes", the sound gets way too "boomy" like that.
For acoustic guitar, I either use an X-Y configuration of Rode NT5's positioned at the 12th fret, at a distance of about 1 foot, or put one NT5 at the 12th fret, and another aimed behind the bridge. Be sure to follow the 3:1 rule if you do it this way.
For mandolin, I use the X-Y configuration of Rode NT5's aimed just below the treble "F Hole" at a distance of about 1 foot. I have also used an AT4033 on mandolin, aimed at the same location as the X-Y pair, with good results as well.
For banjo, I've used many different types/brands of mics. On banjo, ribbon mics will typically always sound better..at least to me they do. Ribbons seems to naturally loose "that ugly 12Khz" that banjos make. I have also used an AT4033, Neumann TLM-103, Rode K2, Rode NT5, AT Pro37R, SM57, SM58...etc., and the list goes on. My advice for banjo, is if you are on a budget, go buy yourself a cheap Nady RSM2 ribbon mic, take it apart and remove the 'inner' wind screen, made up of one piece of wire screen and another piece of fabric material. This is very easy to remove and can also be replaced later if you like. I also removed the "interior grille" from my RSM2. Doing this will open the top end up a bit. For my needs, this mic does the job. Of course, if you are not on a budget, I'd spring for the Royer R121 ribbon mics... If you buy
the RSM2, remember, ribbon mics are very sensitive and if you do the mods I've mentioned they become even more fragile...be careful with them.
I'm currently experimenting with using two "Chinese" ribbon mics that I bought from a group buy off this board back earlier in the year. I've not gotten to do enough experimenting with them to give an opinion yet though. They are the same models as the Nady RSM-3, although the ones that several members of this board purchased were "unbranded". I have 2 of them.