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Thread Acoustic guitar.

  • 7 replies
  • 8 participants
  • 6,331 views
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Topic Acoustic guitar.
Im miking an acoustic guitar in my apartment and i am having trouble making it sound the way I want. I have tried miking it about a foot away pointed at the hole with a akg c3000b condensor, but i get to much picky attack sound then i tried pointing it at the 12th fret not much better. I tried positioning the mic about 3 1/2 ft away and pointing it at a small angle away from the source and that seemed to sound better with a more roomy sound. I have also tried alot of different eq settings. I was just wondering if anybody had any good advice to making an acoustic guitar sound warm and full with out so much attack. I'm mainly wondering about mics and mic placement. I also have a 57 and some other dynamics to my disposal.
2
Hey whats up?
Well, I cant say that I've recorded an acoustic guitar successfully myself, but the last time my band and I were in the studio, we got a killer and I mean killer acoustic sound. I'll post a link to just the acoustic intro track that we got, that way you can see if that's the sound you are going for.
Anyways, the way our engineer got it to sound so killer was mainly with eq and a bit of reverb. He set the mic, a shure sm57 about 1 foot away from the guitar, aimed at the hole and just recorded our guitarist playing. Like I said, it ws all in the eq, which from what I can tell takes a lot of experience to get a good grasp of.. I also think he had some send effects going on, because that is what really made it sound full.

Check out the link, the tune is called Daddy's Home Intro.

https://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=4318&alid=-1

I hope this could be of some help.

Later,

Bones.
3

%1$s a écrit Hey whats up?
Well, I cant say that I've recorded an acoustic guitar successfully myself, but the last time my band and I were in the studio, we got a killer and I mean killer acoustic sound. I'll post a link to just the acoustic intro track that we got, that way you can see if that's the sound you are going for.
Anyways, the way our engineer got it to sound so killer was mainly with eq and a bit of reverb. He set the mic, a shure sm57 about 1 foot away from the guitar, aimed at the hole and just recorded our guitarist playing. Like I said, it ws all in the eq, which from what I can tell takes a lot of experience to get a good grasp of.. I also think he had some send effects going on, because that is what really made it sound full.

Check out the link, the tune is called Daddy's Home Intro.

https://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=4318&alid=-1

I hope this could be of some help.

Later,

Bones.


Man... i loved the acoustic sound, could you be more precise on the EQ settings and so on? :)


-Shagrath
4
hiya
to get a really glistening acoustic sound, you first need a great mic.. assuming you have this:
you can use one mic aimed at the guitar (the further away the more room sound you get)
or
you can use two mics. to use two mics, you can aim one at the head end of the guitar. this mic picks up fret noise and hand movement and gives it a more realistic and raw sound. point the other mic at the soundbox a short distance away. If youve got more mics to hand, use another one further away in the room to pick up character. this is assuming you have a good sounding room.
you need to be careful about phase differences when using more than one mic. sounds can interfere. you should be able to find a good placement though.

right now you've recorded it you need to apply maybe some compression, eq and some reverb.

apply the compression first to bring out the more subtle tones of the guitar and also to just balance out the signal (this may not be neccessary depending on how well you recorded it)

now, apply any exciters if you have any and follow up with some EQ. generally speaking, i find that cutting at around 400 to 800hz (not entirely though) and boosting 100hz and above 2-3khz brings out a nice deep sound. the 100hz obviously provides your bass and the higher frequencies give it the sparkle. 3khz will give you the attack frequency. boost at above 5khz to get a more airy sound..

Eq can only be applied well if your original signal is good though, so make sure you get the best recording quality you can with no noise or hiss.


hope that helps
5
most of the time i have found that a large diaphram condenser placed over the shoulder (near the players ear) pointed towards the guitar does the trick. just remember if your not using an omni mic dont mic the sound hole directly....this produces a horrible boomy tone.
6
2 large diaphram condensors. One at the 12th fret the other at the bridge. Have the guitar player sit as close to the mics as they can, record,EQ and double the track. If you have another condensor put it 5-6 feet in front of the player at the level of the soundhole. Nice ambient effect.
7
I've found after much experimentation that the best overall acoustic guitar recordings I've done were with a hypercardiod small diaphram condensor. My favorite for this purpose thus far has been a surprisingly affordable Sennheiser e614 ($199.95 at most places). It affords easy placement for best results without the typical boomy should my dreadnaught Martin would otherwise provide. The rest indeed can be accomplish through some fine tuning with a good parametric and shelving eq, which in my case is built into the unit (I use a Korg D3200 DAW). They are reasonably quiet but the overall tonal balance they give is quite excellent, especially for acoustic and woodwind instruments. A nice mic preamp will only make things better. Eq is inevitable but one must be VERY careful NOT to destroy the character of the instrument with excessive or incorrect Eq.
8
My 2 cents worth:

Position a Dynamic Mic (I use SM57) at the point where the neck meets the body about 3 inches away.

Now place a Large Diaphram Condensor 2 - 3 feet away pointing towards the general area of the body.

If you have a pickup in the Acoustic, record that also onto a 3rd input.

Now Pan SM57 Left, Condensor right and pick middle and adjust levels to get a realy nice full bodied sound.

Don't use this method if you are sitting the guitar in with a bunch of other instruments as you will swamp the mix. This works great for simple acoustic peices.

There is a piece on my latest episode about this if you want to hear the sound I created using this method. Although the Pickup was not used in this case just the two mics.

http://home_recording_odyssey.podOmatic.com/entry/2006-10-01T18_24_35-07_00

Regards

Andrew