What do you all like for mics on an acoustic guitar?

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DrewPeterson7

DrewPeterson7

Sage of the Order
Just bored on a Wednesday at work, and sort of thinking out loud. I primarily record electric guitars, but like layering acoustic rhythm tracks and do the odd acoustic song here and there. I've got a pretty good signalchain, usually using a CAPI v28 for acoustics (I have a couple BAE1073MPs but think the API-style pre does a nicer, sparklier job on acoustic) with Neve 551 and Chandler TG Opto compressor 500 series units available when needed. Generally, I'll either use a SE4400a C414-style mic or a SE VR1 ribbon, and if I'm doing just a single mic mono recording it's usually pointed at the fretboard over the neck joint. I'm very happy with the results. Guitar in question is a Martin, a MC16GTE, incidentally,

But, GAS is a cruel mistress, so what are your favorite acoustic mics? What else should I be thinking of adding down the road, if I want different flavors? Mostly just making conversation, but I'm curious what you all reach for as your go-to mic if you have an acoustic guitar you want to record.
 
I like 414's, or old 451's - but if it's on stage I rather like the Beyer M201 dynamic.
 
TLM 103. Check the sticky.
WhiteStrat

Thread 'Acoustic Guitar Recording 101'

Intro

After posting an acoustic piece in the clinic (post here) I got a few questions about my approach to recording acoustic guitar. So at the risk of boring some veterans, I’ll spell it out here. Sometimes I think it's hard to imagine the benefits of stereo recording and double tracking when it's just words. So working with a chunk of that tune (without the Marshall Tucker style flute!) I've posted a bunch of MP3s so you can hear for yourself how the track builds up and fills out.

DISCLAIMER: This is not the only way. This just happens to be my way. And it works pretty darn...
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Thread 'Acoustic Guitar Recording 101'
 
I'll be hoinest, I haven't used a SDC on, well, anything, much less an acoustic, in a very l;ong time. I used to do a lot with an X-Y array in around the same spot that I typically mic now, but increasingly I've preferred mono doubletracked guitars over stereo singletracked guitars, so that's fallen by the wayside.

Probably should give it another shot anyway.

EDIT - I also should probably at least add a clip of what I've been doing lately - I'm pretty happy with it, but figured this could be a good discussion anyway.
EDIT #2 - here:
That should work - that's the intro for a song I'm working on, amp VSTs for the time being, and the acoustic panned R doubled by a clean-ish guitar panned L with a decent amount of delay. That was a SE4400 into a CAPI v28, little bit of EQ on input but essentially nothing else done to it that I can recall, for now.
 
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If I'm recording a guitar with a fair amount of bottom, I tend to like my Rode M5s. They are a bit lighter on the bottom, so it makes a better balance. Otherwise I have my Lauten LA-120s which have a more natural sound but have a touch more noise.

There have been times where I've used my NT1 with my Miktek 300 in an M/S configuration, and I liked the sound.

It all depends on my mood, I guess.
 
TalismanRich said:
If I'm recording a guitar with a fair amount of bottom, I tend to like my Rode M5s. They are a bit lighter on the bottom, so it makes a better balance. Otherwise I have my Lauten LA-120s which have a more natural sound but have a touch more noise.
Click to expand...
Couldn’t you use the Lauten and a HPF?


TalismanRich said:
There have been times where I've used my NT1 with my Miktek 300 in an M/S configuration, and I liked the sound.

It all depends on my mood, I guess.
Click to expand...
That sounds interesting - I’ve never bought any Rode mics before - I always found them way to Brite.
 
Papanate said:
Couldn’t you use the Lauten and a HPF?



That sounds interesting - I’ve never bought any Rode mics before - I always found them way to Brite.
Click to expand...
The Lauten just has a different balance compared to the M5s. They fill out my Dean acoustic, but my Taylor dreadnought just seemed to be too bottom heavy with them. I've also got AKG P170 SDCs. I've used them as well, but not as much in the past year.

My NT1 is anything but bright. I find the Miktek and Warm 47jr are both brighter than the NT1. I see lots of people who like to dump on anything Rode (or Warm or that matter) but I thing a lot of that is just sour grapes because they aren't $$$$$$ mics. It's even funnier when people put down Rode mics as cheap Chinese mics, when they are all made in Australia ... in house. It's the "cheap Chinese crap" syndrome. Forums are ripe with the "flavor of the month". When Studio Projects came out with the C1 it was SO great. Then it wasn't. When the Rodes first came out, they were great... then they weren't. The TLM-103 was too bright, then it wasn't.

If it's not a 70 year old U47 with an original VF14 tube, then it's crap. i just chuckle and move on. The "cheap" mics today are WORLDS better than anything I could buy for reasonable money 50-60 years ago. I'm not going to spend $800-1000 to buy one mic just to record a few songs in my basement! Heck, my box stock V67G works damn well. I paid a whopping $70 for that one.
 
I've had a chance to play with quite a few different mics on my acoustic recently. Probably the most flattering was a pair of Shure KSM141 SDCs which seemed to make it slightly larger than life. I also enjoyed using a pair of Earthworks C30 choir mics and these actually made it onto a recent release. However, neither of them were that much better than the Line Audio CM3s that I normally use.

I also rather liked the sound from a Stagg large diaphragm condenser although that one is very instrument dependent - it sounded terrible on my son's classical guitar.
 
I do a mid/side setup with the beyer M130/160 or a neck/bout setup with m201s. Been preferring the mid/side a ton lately, with either a Martin 12 fret or my old Yamaha fg331s. Nice full stereo sound if you want it.
 
Depends so much on how the player plays - I'm always very careful to never say the S word, as this is exactly what all these nice techniques are not. Is a nice effect, but not remotely real. If you stick your ears at any distance from a guitar, you never hear what multiple mics hear. Of course, I do it too - but it's just too strange for reality. As finger noise width kind of sounds huge as you play lower, and vanishes as you play high, and how pick or finger noise makes all that percussive noise.
 
One of the nice things about M/S is that you can have a full field, or collapse it to mono if you want. I like that it seems to provide a sense of space around the guitar without the exaggerated L-R that sometimes happens when mono signals are hard panned.
 
I'll admit I've only played around a little with mid/side... but I abandoned it pretty quickly because it sounded expansive in headphones... but created this weird "hollow' and moving feeling as you moved your head around the listening position on my mains, as the side phase-reversed recordings got louder or softer depending on which speaker your head was closest to, and it sounded pretty awful in the room. It's possible there was something I was doing wrong here, but... if not, my takeaway was this was only really a good approach for headphone listening, when it was even remotely close to a near field source. I hear it's better as a distant mic on a large stereo source, like a choir, or something, but I can't say I've tried.
 
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