Sample clip of SM81's on acoustic

[sile2001]

Lots of questions have been flying around about the "best" mics for acoustic guitars and whatnot. I've been really impressed with my SM81's, and since I was already recording a background music track for my little sister's performance up at school, I thought I'd go ahead and put it up here so people can hear for themselves

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/4/sile2001music.htm
The track will obviously be the one with SM81 in the title. For some reason the mp3 download doesn't work, but the lo-fi and hi-fi streaming still do.

Pardon the rough spots in the playing and the extra noise at the beginning...fingerstyle is not my forté.

The guitar is a Taylor 614ce, so that certainly didn't hurt the sound at all . I stereo mic'ed it, but decided to try something other than X-Y. One mic was aimed right at the 12th fret and about 4 inches away. The other was aiming at a spot about 1 inch behind the bridge (getting the real body of the sound), and at about the same distance of 4 inches away. Panned the two mics at 40% to left and right and let it go at that. There is no EQ or reverb or any other effects on that guitar track.

I'm quite happy with the results, and I hope this helps people out, and would like to hear any feedback people have as to the tone.

 

[vangore]

the bass is a bit overbearing and almost sounds unnatural to me. its pretty nice though, good stuff, how would you compare them to km184s?

 

[omtayslick]

I use an SM81 on my Martin, and am happy with it. Unfortunately I only own one.

I thought that you achieved very nice tone. What was the rest of the chain?
Very nice for no EQ whatsoever. And to be really finicky: New strings? Sounds like new strings.

However, I agree about the bass. It was a little loud for me too, in my usually bass-light nearfields.

 

[sile2001]

Thanks for the input on the bass! Part of that was because I was mixing it right under my parent's bedroom at 3:30 in the morning so i couldn't really bring it up to any kind of volume. But it's just as well for this purpose i think...the system it's being played on has pretty much non-existent bass response.

I've actually never used km184's before, but I would like to try them out. The only other mics I've ever used for acoustics were my pair of M-Audio Solaris mics. They did a very decent job, but surprisingly, didn't have quite the level of detail that the SM81's had.

Rest of the signal chain? Umm Straight into the onboard mic pre's of my Motu 828mkII. I could have run them into my PreSonus Digimax LT, but I was too lazy to crawl around back and plug the cables in there. The strings aren't really new, they're maybe a month or two old. Elixir Lights.....the strings that guitar was made for!

 

[omtayslick]

The strings aren't really new, they're maybe a month or two old. Elixir Lights.....the strings that guitar was made for!

Sounds like you're right. They sounded lively and fresh.

 

[XLR]

Nice tone quality. The low end is controllable with a good EQ.

Tim