Acoustic Guitar Techniques

[the velour fog]

what are your favorite mic placements/signal chains for acoustic guitar?

i need some possible suggestions. i've been liking most of the sounds i get when recording, except the acoustic.

suggestions?

[JohnDavisNYC]

it all starts with the guitar... what sort of guitar(s) are you recording? i've found that it's pretty hard to mess up the sound of an old hummingbird or an old guild. as far as mics go, i like my soundelux u95 alot, through the EH tube pre, to tape or daw, maybe with a little compression on the way in if i'm feeling it. also, i've been loving this rft pm750.... much 'knockier' old school sound. will be doing some acoustic stuff with the u95 and the neve portico tomorrow, so we'll see how well that works out.

cheers,
john

[JASIII]

I aim a LDC (AT4033, MXL v69ME, CAD M179, C414, TO Ribbon, whatever) between the 12th and 15 fret, right where the neck and body meet, about a foot to a foot and a half away. Sometimes in addition, a SDC aimed at the bridge can be nice too. I agree the EH toob pre really rules for this! I ALWAYS use compression on an acoustic. Always. Usually the RNC.

[mjau]

If it's a dense mix, I'm not afraid to do some wicked high pass filtering on the acoustic to get it right in the mix.
I had access to an LA-610 that was pretty awesome for acoustic guitars, especially with a slight high-end life and some mild compression.

[joel hamilton]

Put the mic where it sounds really good, not so it looks like a press picture from a session in the 70's in memphis.

I always just put a mic near the guitar and hit record. I have really found that to be the best. I am not being sarcastic. i tried all kinds of mic "schemes" and wound up tracking in mono with a good mic and pre, and I am happy 99% of the time. If I am not, I go back in the room and move the mic 3 inches towards the headstock, and record that...

[mjau]

Joel - did I read somewhere that you're really liking the EH pre for acoustic guitars? What is it about that piece that works well?

[joel hamilton]

Joel - did I read somewhere that you're really liking the EH pre for acoustic guitars? What is it about that piece that works well?

It sounds REALLY great for AC gtr. Like really, really great. I dunno, something about it just pulls the gtr forward, but with just a little saturation that makes the pick sound just right to me...

I really like my Manley/VTL tube reference pre for AC gtr as well. Funny that the 1600 dollar mono tube pre, and the 200 dollar mono tube pre are my faves for Acoustic!?!?

[nacho459]

Alice on the 12th fret. Done.

[mjau]

Hey, whatever works, right?

[JASIII]

Joel - did I read somewhere that you're really liking the EH pre for acoustic guitars? What is it about that piece that works well?

It sounds REALLY great for AC gtr. Like really, really great. I dunno, something about it just pulls the gtr forward, but with just a little saturation that makes the pick sound just right to me...
quote]

I agree completely. There's just "something" about that EH pre on acoustic. It gives it this nice 3D sound, kind of shimmery almost. I was shocked the first time I tried it on acoustic, it really drew me in and I just kept playing and playing just out of love of the sound.

[drumsound]

I really like SDC in XY or mono near the neck/ body joint. Great River MP2H or other fast pre. Sometimes I like the mic near the back of the guitar.

Those are my starting points...

[mjau]

Joel - did I read somewhere that you're really liking the EH pre for acoustic guitars? What is it about that piece that works well?

It sounds REALLY great for AC gtr. Like really, really great. I dunno, something about it just pulls the gtr forward, but with just a little saturation that makes the pick sound just right to me...
quote]

I agree completely. There's just "something" about that EH pre on acoustic. It gives it this nice 3D sound, kind of shimmery almost. I was shocked the first time I tried it on acoustic, it really drew me in and I just kept playing and playing just out of love of the sound.

*Mjau begins to open wallet, dreaming on cool new pre, only to find crumbs and scraps of paper idly languishing*

[penrithmatt]

depends on what purpose the guitar track has to serve.i mean,is it a rhythm track in a dense mix with loads of drums,bass and electric guitars??is it finger picking?? is it gonna be just guitar??

anyway,i'd think about that for a minute before anything else....and then i'd probably do what i always do!!

1.U87 into Neve 1081.bit of 1176 compression,if needed,to tape.
2.Royer 121 "backwards" into 1081.1176
3.SM57 into 1081.1176...

i usually like the spot where the neck meets the body,about 8 inches back,but i'll have a listen first and see is anything sounds better elsewhere.

i've occasionally had luck with a contact mic taped to the body of the guitar,and with a "bug" mic inside the whole,positioned behind the strings.....this is usually in conjunction with a more traditional mic out front though.......

[Phiz]

I'm going to add another dimension to this discussion. I've recently had to do two different sessions where acoustic guitar and vocals were done by one person simulatanously. The artist felt this would result in their best performance. I deperately wanted seperate tracks for vocal and guitar.

I tired a whole bunch of stuff none of which I was thrilled with, eventually I took the least bad sounding one and just went with it. In one case this was a AT4033 on vocal (4" off mouth, popscreen, HPF on) and SM81 on the guitar (sometimes over the shoulder about 8" off body of the guitar pointing almost straight down towards the bridge, other times 6" off the 12th fret pointing a little towards the body of the guitar). The second time I had an SE1000 on vocal (8" off mouth, popscreen) and an mk012 on the guitar (6" off the 12th fret pointing a little towards the body of the guitar). Preamps were all from my A&H MixWizard board.

My obvious two problems are bleed and phase issues. In all cases the mics were closer in than I would prefer, but I traded some fullness and lack of proximity effect for less bleed. I got my bleed down to a good enough level (desired signal about 6db higher than bleed signal). Tone was decent to good, and there was some annoying high end comb filtering going on. I tried a bunch of placements on the guitar (off the neck, off the sound whole, off the bridge, varients angled downward). I'd love to hear other suggestions that I could try out next time. The two that have come to me since then are 1) trying to find a single location where I can put both cardiod (or even hypercard) microphones but point them at the different sources and hope to get low enough bleed, or 2) keep the vocal where it is, but try getting an omni in really close on the guitar body, perhaps from underneath it even. 1 kills the phase issue but probably will hurt tone a ton. 2 might get the bleed down low enough that phase doens't matter and perhaps I can find a spot to get good tone with the omni.

Any thoughts or sugestions would be appreciated.

[JohnDavisNYC]

i did a fun little record with my friend damon from inouk, and it was all live acoustic and vocals in my living room tracked into logic on my laptop and then mixed to 1/4"... it turned out amazingly well, and i used almost nothing to get the results... i used a CAD E100 (the one i'm selling... ) on the guitar and a Rode NT1 (also selling... ) kind of in a backwards X/Y, so that the diaphragms were pretty much 90 degrees off, but right next to each other, and had one aimed up towards his mouth and the other aimed down towards the guitar. these went through Sytek pres, into an 828. after a little tweaking, everything worked well, and sounded amazing...(yes, even the NT1 sounded amazing for this stuff)... some how it all worked and sounded genuine and real and suprisingly 'pro'... still something i have on my demo reel, after all the nice mics and tape machines and pres.

anyway, that XY ish idea gave me really good seperation (the null point of each cardioid mic was facing the other sound) and what leakage there was was in phase. yay.

john.