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5 Stereo Mic Techniques for Acoustic Guitar (or ANY acoustic instrument)

Joe Gilder — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:04:26 +0000

If you record acoustic guitar, then chances are you’ve either played around with stereo recording or at least thought about it. But maybe you’re not sure which techniques to use and the pros and cons of each.

I think I can help.

I’ve recorded acoustic guitar more than any other instrument, so I’ve spent countless hours of quality time with my guitar and a pair of microphones. And I’ve gotten pretty good at getting great acoustic guitar tone.

What is stereo recording?

Stereo recording is simply using two microphones to capture a two-channel “stereo” image of the source. By panning the signals left and right, you can create a sense of space and width and depth, simply by using two microphones instead of one.

Stereo mic techniques can be applied to any acoustic instrument – drum overheads, piano, cello, upright bass, choirs. I’ve used these same stereo techniques on all these instruments. So even if you don’t record acoustic guitar, keep reading. These techniques apply to all kinds of recording situations, and it’s good to be familiar with them.

Mono recording (using only one microphone) is still very useful. There are plenty of times where I’ll simply use one microphone on acoustic guitar, especially if it’s for a bigger production where the guitar is playing a minor role. If the guitar is a big focus of the song, then I’ll probably stereo-mic it.

Check out these two articles for more on stereo vs. mono recording:

Here are 5 stereo-mic techniques I use fairly regularly. All but #4 can be applied to almost any instrument.

1. XY

XY is oftentimes my go-to stereo technique. Why? Because it doesn’t lend itself to phase issues. Phase issues can occur when multiple microphones pick up the same source. If the microphones are in different locations, then there’s a chance they’ll pick up the sound at different times.

Imagine taking two identical tracks in your DAW and delaying one by a few milliseconds. (Go try it if you’ve never done it.) What happens? Things start sounding thin. That’s what happens when your two mics are out of phse.

With the XY technique, the mics are essentially at the same point in time, so any signal will hit both microphones at roughly the same time. It essentially gets rid of phase issues.

Pros – stereo image without any phase issues

Cons – not as “wide” of an image as other techniques

2. ORTF

ORTF (it stands for some French phrase) is essentially taking the XY technique and flipping them outwards instead of inwards. The idea here is to create a recording that sounds very close to how the human ears hear.

The mics are approximately at the same distance and angle as our ears. On headphones, this technique sounds incredible. It’s as if you’re sitting in front of the guitar listening yourself. (For specific specs on ORTF, click here.)

Pros – realistic stereo field

Cons – some potential phase issues

3. Spaced Pair

Spaced pair is just like it sounds. You set up two microphones spaced out, facing the instrument. Spaced pair is the most susceptible to phase issues. I almost never get it right the first time. It requires a lot of attention and listening to get it right.

Spaced pair can give you a huge, wide sound, but only if you get the two mics in phase. The way I normally go about making sure they’re in phase is to listen to the mics in mono. I’ll pan both tracks to the center, and move the mics around until the mono signal sounds nice and full. If the sound is missing a lot of bass and sounds phasey, I know the mics aren’t in phase yet.

Oftentimes just moving one mic a few inches will fix the problem. Once the mono signal sounds full and huge, you’re ready. The stereo signal will be enormous. Be careful, though. If the guitarist moves or rotates a bit, you might be back out of phase again.

Pros – very wide sound

Cons – very susceptible to phase issues, “center” isn’t as clear

4. Over-the-Shoulder

Over-the-shoulder is a technique I’ve only used occasionally. Essentially you put a mono mic in front of the guitar and another mic over the neck pointing down. While this isn’t a “true” stereo technique, a lot of engineers use this as their default setup for recording acoustic guitar.

I find it to be a bit fickle. The front mic captures the body of the instrument, while the shoulder mic only captures the higher-end sound and pick noise. That means I can’t really pan these very wide without it sounding funny.

It can give an interesting stereo image with lots of fret noise, if that’s what the song needs.

Guitarists tend to like this technique because it sounds a lot like the guitar sounds to their ears when they’re playing it.

Pros – if shoulder mic doesn’t work, you can still use the front mic as a mono mic; grabs more finger/fret noise and “air”

Cons – not really a L/R stereo technique, tends to capture a lot of pick noise, phase issues are still a concern

5. Mid-Side

Mid-side is the most complex technique, but it’s pretty cool. The setup is one cardioid (or omni) microphone pointed at the guitar and another figure-8 microphone facing perpendicular to the first mic.

The mid mic gets recorded to its own track. The side mic gets recorded to TWO separate mono tracks (record the same signal to two tracks), panned left and right. Flip the phase on one of the tracks.

This allows you to adjust the width of the recording. The more you bring up the side tracks, the wider the sound. The more you bring up the mid mic, the more “mono” the sound. What’s great about this is you can change the width after-the-fact. If you’re mixing and wish the track was wider, you can make it happen. You can’t do that with any other technique.

Like the XY technique, mid-side doesn’t tend to have many phase issues, because the mic capsules are so close together. If your room is noisy or not very well treated acoustically, then this technique might not be for you, as the sid mic is picking up everything to the left and right of the guitar (your room).

Pros – very little phase issues, mono-compatible, adjustable width

Cons – more complex/confusing to set up, having too many choices may bog you down later, harder to ‘commit’ to a sound

If you want to learn more…

The images in today’s post are straight from the content within my Recording Acoustic Guitar course. If you’re interested in learning everything there is to know about recording an acoustic guitar (both in mono and stereo), then check it out. You’ll learn how I record acoustic guitar, and you’ll get to hear all these techniques in action. It’s a LOT of fun. Click here to check it out.

Comment Time

Do you use any of these techniques? There are plenty more stereo techniques, but these are the five I like to use. Which ones do you like? Which ones are you going to try next? Leave a comment and let us know!

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Back That Vocalist Up

Joe Gilder — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:00:24 +0000

What do your vocal recording sessions look like?

You get the Pro Tools session ready (create the vocal track and extra playlists for takes, create a reverb track and route the vocal to it), set up the mic stand, pop filter, music stand. Maybe dim the lights, have a bottle of water handy…perhaps you even light a candle to “set the mood”?

Okay, I can’t remember the last time I lit a candle to record vocals.

What’s the next thing that happens? Where do you put the vocalist once she shows up? Do you plan to put her REALLY close to the mic, like an inch or two away?

Hang on there, cowboy.

The Pictures Lie

We’ve all seen ‘em. You’re flipping through your favorite recording magazine, and there’s a microphone ad. It shows a fairly well-known singer, belting away into a shiny microphone, lips almost touching the mic.

It looks awesome. It probably doesn’t sound awesome.

But that’s what we’ve conditioned ourselves to do, right? We place the singer as close as humanly possible to the microphone, hoping to capture a crisp, warm, clean, detailed performance. Right?

But then a few weeks later, when it comes time to mix the song, what do you do? You end up EQ-ing the vocal like crazy, trying to walk the fine balance between being too boomy and being too thin.

Why?

Proximity Effect

Yep. You forgot about it, didn’t you?

Proximity effect is the tendency of a cardioid (directional) microphone to boost the low frequencies of a signal as the signal gets closer to the source. While this might be great for a voiceover track you’re doing for a movie trailer, it’s not that helpful for singers.

Whenever I mix vocals, I remove low end. I usually knock out everything below 150 Hz or so. Why? Because it’s unnecessary. Most normal, human vocalists can’t sing that low.

This lets me get rid of any low end rumble that would muddy up my mix. The proximity effect only adds to that rumble, so why not do something about it BEFORE you record the vocal?

Back the vocalist up. Just try it. Try recording the vocalist 12 inches away from the mic, maybe even 18.

You may think that you’ll only be recording more room noise, but I’ve found that’s normally not the case. As long as your room is fairly well-treated, it’s worth trying.

Intimate Doesn’t Mean “Close”

A lot of times you want a very intimate, or at least “up front,” vocal. You may think the only way to get that is to record the vocalist very close to the mic and deal with the excess low end later.

I thought the same thing for a long time. Then I tried backing up. As it turns out, especially when I’m using a condenser microphone, there is MORE than enough detail and presence in the vocal, even when I sing from 18″ away.

Condenser mics capture a lot of detail, even when the vocalist is farther away.

The Inverse Square Law

One final point. I’m not going to get too technical, but there’s this concept called the Inverse Square Law. It essentially states that every time you double the distance from the source, you cut the volume by half (or something like that).

This is another huge reason not to mic the vocalist too closely. Think about it. If the singer is two inches from the microphone, and he sways back to 4 or 6 inches while he’s singing, that’s going to cut the volume of his voice by 2-3 times. I’m a singer myself, and I move when I sing. If you’re wanting a more consistent leve out of your singer, something you won’t have to wrestle with later with heavy compression and automation just to get it to sound consistent, try having the singer back up.

If he moves from 10 inches to 14 inches, that’s not nearly as drastic of a change in volume. Suddenly things start to become more consistent, which is a very good thing.

As with everything I teach you, there are no rules. Do what sounds best for the song. If close-miking is the best-sounding option, DO THAT. However, if you’ve never even TRIED moving the singer farther away, you should. Let your ears take it from there.

If you want to dive deeper into vocal recording and mixing with me, join my latest live class. It starts tomorrow, October 6th, 2011. Get your questions answered and let me help you get better vocal recordings. It’s all here:

www.understandingrecording.com/vocals

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The Key to a Killer Client Relationship

Joe Gilder — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Yesterday’s post on charging for your work sparked some really interesting discussions. If you haven’t yet, be sure to join in the conversation over there (or on Facebook or Twitter).

The general premise of yesterday’s post was to think about charging by the project rather than by the hour. One question came up about what to do with clients who are unreasonable. If you’re charging by the project, how do you protect yourself against clients who want revision after revision after revision, with no regard for your time whatsoever?

You could say I’m a bit naive sometimes. I know people take advantage of people all the time, but I tend to think that if someone takes advantage of my time, it’s because I let them do it.

I firmly believe that one of the keys to success in any endeavor, whether you’re making money with it or not, is to take responsibility for what happens to you. The guy who sits in his studio, tweaking plug-in settings all day, wishing someone would just show up and pay him to record a song, is likely to complain that he can’t “find clients.”

I say nay. You don’t have clients because you don’t go looking for them. You don’t invest in people and relationships, which over time reveal all sorts of opportunities.

So, you first have to realize that if clients are taking advantage of you, it’s your fault. Either it’s your fault for ever taking on the job to begin with (because you knew this would happen) or it’s your fault because you didn’t do the one thing that would’ve cleared all this up.

EXPECTATIONS

That’s right. I whipped out ALL CAPS for that header. Expectations. Are you setting client expectations appropriately? Do you even think about it? Do you assume they think the same way that you do?

It’s your responsibility as the engineer/producer to make sure everybody is on the same page. If the client walks into the studio thinking you just have to stick a mic in front of him and press record, you need to take a few minutes to explain how important mic choice and mic placement are to the recording process. It’s not his fault if he doesn’t know much about recording. And if you assume he does, don’t be surprised if things get awkward later.

Likewise, if the band comes in for a tracking day, and they hardly know the songs, they’re not together at all, and they just assume you can “fix it” later, you’ve GOT to set those expectations, too. Yes, you can fix a lot of timing issues in editing (check out Understanding Editing, and I’ll teach you how), but there is absolutely no replacement for a great performance. Editing can help, but the real magic happens when the musicians are prepared. If they aren’t, and they expect you to spend 12 hours editing, you need to make sure they realize how long it takes to edit, and charge them accordingly.

Be a Teacher

Don’t be the arrogant engineer. I hate the arrogant engineer. He talks down to you and treats you like you’re stupid. (Sometimes when I’m playing on a session, I won’t tell them I’m an engineer myself…it’s kinda fun to see how they treat ‘just a musician.’) Be friendly. Take it upon yourself to teach them about the recording process. The session will go smoothly, and the entire recording process will be more enjoyable for everyone involved?

Why? Because you set the proper expectations.

So…how do you deal with customer expectations? Comment below, please.

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Charging for your Work

Joe Gilder — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:00:00 +0000

In honor of Labor Day, let’s talk about work a little bit. (What, you thought I’d take the day off?)

I’m not talking about crap-I-have-to-go-to-the-office work. I’m talking about work in your studio, work that you (hopefully) love.

Do you ever get paid for your recording skills? Do you ever charge your clients? Perhaps you don’t, but you’d like to. Or maybe you’ve started charging for a few projects here and there, but you really don’t know where to start.

Let me see if I can help.

First things first…

I’m not going to tell you how much you should be charging. There are so many variables that come into play, there’s really no way for me to set a definitive “rule” for you to follow. However, I can give you some guidelines for how to think about charging for your work, along with some different ways to go about it.

But before I talk about that, let me just say this. There’s nothing wrong with making money from your talents. If you are legitimately good at what you do, if you can get a decent-sounding recording, then you shouldn’t feel weird about asking for money in exchange for that service.

When I first sold a training video here on HSC, I was a little freaked out. What if everyone gets offended that I dare ask for money? Guess what? If you provide something valuable, people will pay for it.

Is that singer-songwriter capable of recording his own music and making it sound good? No? Can you do that? That’s valuable.

How much you charge, well, that’s up to you. I would experiment. Start low-ish and work your way up.

Paid by the hour

Initially you’ll think about charging by the hour. 4-hour session at $10 an hour is $40 bucks. That’s fine, and it might be a good way to get started, but I would encourage you to move away from this as much as you can.

I still do the occasional hourly gig, but it’s become more rare. Why? Because I personally think there’s something inherently wrong with an hourly wage. That may be why I’ve never had a “salaried” job. I’ve always been paid for selling stuff. My income was dependent on results, not how much time I spent.

Back at Sweetwater, if I spent 6 hours putting together a recording system for a client, and he bought it at another store, I didn’t get paid for those 20 hours. I think that’s fair. I’d rather get paid for results than time. And that’s how you should probably view your recording gigs.

Paid by the project

Here’s what I try to do whenever I can. I charge by the project. You want me to mix an album for you? Okay, that’ll be X dollars per song.

Why do this? Because it gives the client an absolute number they can work with. If I tell them “It’ll probably be 4-5 hours per song,” and it turns out to be more like 7-8 hours per song, and I’m charging them by the hour, I’ve essentially DOUBLED their cost.

The alternative is to realistically assess how long it will take for you to do a specific project. Come up with a fairly worse-case scenario, then charge for that amount of time.

For example, it usually takes me around 4 hours to mix a song. So I figure what my desired “hourly” rate would be for 4 hours and charge that as my per-song rate. You see what I’ve done now? Now if I can get that song mixed in 2 hours instead of 4, I’m making twice as much per hour. The client is happy, because I still turned in good work, and I’m happy because I was able to work more efficiently and get paid for my work, not my time.

What do you think? I really want to know. Leave a comment below.

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4 No Cost Ways to Guarantee Better Recordings [Webinar Replay]

Joe Gilder — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:00:00 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jVJKi9WysE

Here’s the replay from yesterday’s live webinar I did with Graham Cochrane. We covered a lot of great stuff over the course of the hour, PLUS we talked about the Simply Recording Academy. After you’ve watched the video, click this link to check it out:

www.simplyrecordingacademy.com

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A Drill, a Closet, and a New Tracking Room

Joe Gilder — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Recording in a home studio can be great, but we’re all aware of its shortcomings. If we are lucky, we have a dedicated room to record in. However, we have to use that room as both a control room and a tracking room. Simply put, if you are recording a musician, that musician is in the same room that you are recording in.

That’s not always a problem, and it can be a lot of fun. When I recorded my buddy Kevin‘s vocals for his album, he stayed in the room with me while recording. We had a lot of fun together and made fun of each other. It was great.

But sometimes it’s nice to have some separation.

The problem.

The problem with recording in the same room as your computer is, obviously, there is going to be a lot of noise. Computers are loud, hard drives are loud, and sometimes even pieces of gear are loud. If you’re using a fairly sensitive microphone, then all those noises are going to get picked up in the recording.

Sometimes this is okay. Sometimes it’s not.

The second problem is it can be fairly crowded. The room I currently use as my studio in my house is a fairly small room. Once I add a desk for my computer, a separate desk for my rack gear, and space for guitars, there’s not much room left.

I had a session recently where I was recording upright bass and there was also a producer in the room. That’s three people in a small, little room. Needless to say, it got crowded.

The third problem with recording in your control room is that it can get hot. I’ve mentioned before some ways to make it more comfortable in the studio.

While recording, it’s a good idea to have all fans and air conditioning off, obviously. The problem then becomes how long can you record before it gets too hot in that room? If you have multiple people in the room, along with multiple pieces of gear, that’s a recipe for a nice, toasty recording experience.

Again, none of these things are deal-breakers, but they are inconvenient, and there are some ways to avoid them.

Drill away!

Luckily for me, the closet in my studio is adjacent to the closet in the bedroom next door. Those two closets share an inside wall. This is perfect for expanding my recording setup.

Here’s what I did. I took a power drill and got the largest drill bit I could find. Then I drilled a hole through the wall inside the closet into the next closet. This was perfect because it wasn’t changing the actual walls of the house, and I wasn’t leaving any visible holes in the walls. The holes were in the closet, which wasn’t a big deal.

I then ran cable through the hole, into the next room, and (voilá!) I’ve got a separate tracking room. This is especially great for guitar amps because I can have the guitarist in the room with me, but the loud amp is in the next room.

It’s also great because now because the microphone is only picking up what’s in that room, and not this room, all the noise that my computer produces is no longer an issue.

Not great for everything

While this is a great solution, I doubt many people can acoustically treat two rooms in their house. Our wives are nice enough to let us treat our rooms. It’s probably asking a lot to treat two bedrooms.

That leaves us with a microphone in an untreated space. For loud things like trumpet and guitar amps, this isn’t really a problem. For vocals, it might not be very good. As I’ve mentioned before, acoustic treatment is what helps you capture a nice, tight, dry sound. If you are recording in an untreated room, that becomes an issue.

A second problem with having a second tracking room is it becomes almost impossible for me to record myself in another room. I won’t be able to see the computer or do anything on the screen while I’m recording, and I would end up just wasting time while I run back and forth between the rooms.

Comment time!

Leave a comment below and let me know what you do to get some separation between yourself and the musicians.

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Great Acoustic Guitar Tone – The Preamp (Part 6 of 7)

Joe Gilder — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Everybody asks about what microphones and mic placements they should use on acoustic guitar, but rarely do they ask about the preamp. It’s a shame, because the preamp plays a huge roll in the sound of ANY recording.

As I told you in the Intro to Preamps video, there are lots of different types of preamps. If you’re starting out, you’ll just use the built-in preamps on your audio interface. That’s fine, but just know that a really nice microphone into a cheap preamp may not sound as amazing as you expected.

The Problem with Cheap Preamps

If you’re using cheap preamps, I’m not saying you can’t get a great-sounding recording, but there are things to keep in mind. You may think you don’t have the budget for nice external preamps. If that’s the case, then you REALLY need to pay attention to the preamp quality in the audio interface you decide to buy. If you’re spending $99 on an audio interface, I’m betting those preamps just aren’t going to be that great.

Really cheap preamps have to cut corners, naturally, to hit that low price point. One of the ways they cut corners is by reducing the amount of voltage the preamp has. They use cheaper power supplies, and the preamps usually don’t have a lot of gain. That’s not a problem if you’re recording a loud vocal or loud guitar amps. It DOES become an issue when you’re recording quieter sources…like and acoustic guitar.

To get the signal loud enough, you end up cranking the gain on the preamp. Since cheaper pre’s don’t have a lot of gain to begin with, you sometimes have to crank the preamp almost all the way. At that point, the signal gets very noisy. Yep, when you run cheap preamps really hot, they introduce a lot of noise.

Don’t get me wrong, you can still get a good recording, but at some point you may want to consider either better external preamps or an audio interface with better preamps. I’ll be using the preamps in my Presonus Firestudio Project (affiliate link) for the acoustic guitar class coming up. Nice, clean preamps with a lot of gain. Perfect for acoustic guitar.

How Should the Preamp Sound?

If you go for an external preamp, you’ve got a lot of choices. Typically on acoustic guitar (and most acoustic instruments) I reach for a nice, clean-sounding preamp. I don’t normally use tube preamps on acoustic guitar. I want a clean, accurate, non-colored signal, so I go with a clean solid-state preamp usually. I’ve used the True Systems P-Solo and Presonus Eureka (affiliate links), both great for acoustic.

What preamp do you use? Do you like it?

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Great Acoustic Guitar Tone – Mic Placement: Stereo (Part 5 of 7)

Joe Gilder — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

If using one microphone is great, two must be twice as good, right? Sometimes.

Some of the best acoustic guitar tones I’ve ever gotten have been with two microphones, this is sometimes referred to as stereo mic placement (although two microphones doesn’t always mean it’s technically “stereo,” but that’s for another day).

As with most things, if there stands to be a bigger benefit (better guitar tone), there are also greater risks (phase issues).

Stereo Width

One of the main reasons to use some sort of stereo mic technique is to capture a much wider signal. Rather than a guitar sound that’s fairly one-dimensional, using two microphones lets you capture more realistic, wide-sounding guitar. This is especially good for songs that have very little instrumentation. Full band productions typically don’t benefit from stereo-mic’d acoustic guitar, mainly because you just can’t hear it in the mix.

There are lots of ways to stereo-mic acoustic guitar — XY, Blumlein, Mid-Side, ORTF, Spaced Pair — to name a few. Each of these has its own benefit and drawbacks, and some have a “wider” sound than others. They all, however, give a wider, more realistic sound to the guitar. Think about it, we listen with two ears, it makes sense that two microphones would capture a more realistic sound.

Phase Issues

Whenever you use more than one microphone on a source, you introduce the issue of phasing. Simply put, when a single signal reaches two microphones at different points in time, the resulting sound can be thin or hollow. The slight difference in time (or phase) causes certain frequencies to cancel out.

The key to this is two-fold. First, observe the 3:1 Rule. If the microphones are too close together, phasing WILL happen…and you’ll wish you had just stuck with one microphone.

The second way to combat this is to listen in mono. When you’re placing the microphones, listen to them in mono, NOT stereo. Stereo will sound awesome, but it won’t let you know if there are any phase issues. Listening in mono will quickly point out any problems. If the signal sounds thin, or maybe even boomy, or boxy, or hollow, try moving one of the microphones a few inches. Listen as you move it. Once it sounds good again, THAT’S your placement.

So, what do you think? Leave a comment below and let us know if you stereo-mic acoustic guitar (and why).

If you want to learn all about recording acoustic guitar, join me for the 4-week class, starting this Thursday. Limited spaces available. Click here to check it out.

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Great Acoustic Guitar Tone – Mic Placement: Mono (Part 4 of 7)

Joe Gilder — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

So, you’ve got a good-sounding guitar, you’ve placed it in the right spot in the room, and you’ve picked the right mic for it. Where do you put the mic?

Mic placement can have a dramatic effect on how the guitar sounds in the recording. (Remember how mic placement transformed a floor tom into a kick drum?) A great guitar can sound absolutely horrible with the wrong mic placement. On the flip-side, a mediocre guitar can sound better than it is if you find the right mic placement for it.

There are two main factors to consider with mic placement – distance and location and today we’re simply talking about mono mic techniques, that is, using only one microphone.

Distance

People tend to focus solely on where to point the mic, at the expense of thinking about how far away to place the mic. Distance is just as important as location, in my opinion.

We automatically tend to think the microphone needs to be really close to the guitar to capture that warm, upfront sound. So we place the mic 3-6 inches away. That can work, but it can also be more problematic than anything. Placing a mic really close to the source brings into play a phenomenon called proximity effect. I’ve written on this before, but it simply means that the close you place a directional mic to the source, the greater the bass response of that mic.

Translation: Mic too close = Guitar too boomy.

You may think that moving the mic 12 inches or more away from the instrument would make it sound too thin or roomy, but just try it. I’m always surprised by how great it sounds, even from 12-18 inches away.

12th Fret – The “Magic” Spot

Every guitar is different, but I’ve found there’s one spot on the guitar that usually gives me a nice, balanced sound. If nothing else, it’s a great starting point. It’s the 12th fret.

For some reason, pointing a mic at the 12th fret usually captures plenty of low end from the sound hole, and plenty of brightness/fret noise from the neck. After placing the mic on the 12th fret, play with the angle a little bit. It’s like a natural EQ. Angle the mic towards sound hole if you need more bass. Angle it towards the neck if you need less bass. This is really effective and MUCH better than slapping an EQ plug-in on it later.

That’s not to say the 12th fret is the ONLY place you can mic an acoustic guitar, but if you’re just starting out, it’s a great place to begin. As always, experiment, experiment, experiment.

What’s your favorite place to mic an acoustic guitar with one mic?

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Great Acoustic Guitar Tone – The Mic (Part 3 of 7)

Joe Gilder — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Once you’ve got a great-sounding guitar in a great-sounding spot in the room (and don’t underestimate how important those two steps are), you’re ready to pick your mic.

If you only own one microphone, your choice is easy. If you own several, here are some tips for choosing the right one.

Condenser Mics

95% of the time, I use a condenser microphone when I record acoustic guitars. Condenser mics, as opposed to dynamic mics, tend to capture much more detail, particularly in the high-end. They’re also fairly sensitive, which means they capture the subtle nuances of an acoustic guitar much more effectively.

Because they’re so sensitive, though, they can pick up more than you want them to. It’s part of the trade-off of having a nice condenser mic.

Large-Diaphragm Condenser

For years I always used a large-diaphragm condenser on acoustic guitar. I would just use one of my favorite vocal mics. These tend to work well. They’re sensitive, but not overly sensitive. If you can own just one mic, make it a large-diaphragm condenser.

Small-Diaphragm Condenser

Recently I’ve been using small-diaphragm condensers on some of my acoustic tracks. These “pencil mics” have a much smaller diaphragm, so they’re even more sensitive than their large-diaphragm counterparts. This makes them especially sensitive to sounds like pick noise, finger noise, the musician breathing, etc.

They can provide an incredible amount of detail. But it can sometimes be too much.

Dynamic Mics

I rarely use dynamic mics on acoustic. But sometimes they’re perfect. If your guitar is super bright, a dynamic might tame things down a bit, since it doesn’t “hear” as high as a condenser. Also, if you simply have a bad-sounding room, and you can’t really fix it, a dynamic will pick up less room reflections because it’s less sensitive.

The downside to dynamic mics is that they need a lot more gain from the preamp. If your preamp doesn’t have enough gain, you may end up with a recording that’s too quiet or a recording that has a lot of preamp noise. (Preamps get noisy when you have to crank them all the way.)

Know your Mics

Regardless of what type of microphone you choose (I’ve used ribbon mics with good success in the past), you need to know what your mics sound like. For example, my tube microphone tends to hype the 2-3 kHz range. I always keep this in mind when recording. If I think that will hurt rather than help the sound, I reach for a different mic.

What do you think? What’s your favorite mic for acoustic guitar?