stereo miking steel string acoustic

  • Thread starter Thread starter garth04
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Garth,

A few questions:

1) What brand and style of guitar is it? Woods?

2) Style of playing (e.g., aggresive strumming, vocal accompaniment fingerstyle)?

3) What brand of strings?

4) What preamp are you using?

5) How is your room treated?
 
1) What brand and style of guitar is it? Woods?
Epiphone Troubadour 1966
Made in Kalamazoo, Michigan
It's hard to find info on it. It's completely solid. Was made during Epiphone's independent era and before production moved to Japan.

I found a webpage once where they had a sentence about this model. If my memory serves me it is maple or walnut back and sides with spruce top. Don't know what they did but whoever made this guitar was a master. The sustain is unparalled with any guitar I've ever heard. It feels like the spirit of the woods or something. ;)

I tried hundreds of guitars before I chose this one. That was probably more info than you need but I love this thing.

The sustain makes it hard to record following recommended distances and techniques.

2) Style of playing (e.g., aggresive strumming, vocal accompaniment fingerstyle)?
Mostly fingerpicking with vocals on some songs. I mix strumming in sometimes and play some songs strummed. I hardly ever use a pick. Five is better. :)

3) What brand of strings?
4 Martin, 2 DR :)

4) What preamp are you using?
Pendulum Tube Preamp

5) How is your room treated?
carpet, desk as diffuser, open closet on right 12' wall, medium thickness curtains over windows
 
KM184s have a response curve that looks to me as if it is tailored for close mic placement, but close is anything under 2 feet.

A friend of mine recorded his CD with a pair of KM184s in ORTF and positioned the mics about 10 inches from the face of the guitar directly in front of the soundhole. He got a nice intimate sound without boom. Basically, as you've read in Harvey's thread, you're balancing proximity effect vs. low frequency rolloff and direct to reflected sound. Somewhere between 18" and 6" I would think you'd find your sound.

Why were you unhappy with a coincident arrangement? I have good luck with a coincident X-Y pair pointed at the 12th fret from 10 to 14" away.

Regarding your question about pointing the mic away from the source, you should expect a change in the tonal balance of the mic, since the off-axis sensitivity varies with the frequency even more than the on-axis response.

Finally, if your problem is a low frequency node that happens to fall right at your recording position, you should be able to reduce the problem by moving a foot or two so you're out of the node.

Fran
 
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