acoustic guitar mic techniques!

One of the most important thing before choosing the type of miking techniques we want to use to record the acoustic guitar will be to define the role of the guitar either in the mix or for the song. Questions we may want to ask are, is the guitar the main feature of the song together with the vocals? Or is it just there as a "thickener" for the song? Both answers will lead out to different desired outcomes of sounds and therefore, different techniques will accordingly accommodate to produce the sound we want. For instance, if the guitar only acts as a "thickener", it is supposed to have a small but smooth sound to it. On the flip side, if it is the main support of the song, it should have a larger sound while the other instruments should also be able to accommodate to it in the mix.

Below is a list of mic placement techniques starting from the aim of large sounds to subtle layering-purpose sounds.

1. Asymmetric Pair (An overhead + out front mic)

- This technique uses a pair of ribbon mics (also said to work well with a pair of SM57), one over the head and one out front. It is asymmetric and equidistance to the guitar bridge. The overhead is meant to give out the clarity of the strings and picking while the out front mic is to provide the body of the overall sound.

- Also to reduce phasing issues

2. Mid-Side Configuration

- Uses one LDC (acting as sides) + one SDC (as mid)

- The LDC will then be appointed for hard panning (1L1R) into two channels

- The SDC will be pointing directly to the guitar in cardioid pattern (1 channel)

- Around two feet away from the guitar

- To create a stereo wide sound

3. Bridge-and-fret Stereo (no idea of its true name)

- Uses one LDC in front of the bridge (around 6 inches away) and a SDC near the 12-th or 14th fret

- The LDC is ideal to capture the low-ends from the bridge

- While the SDC is better at capturing the clarity of the strings near the fret

4. SDC on either the bridge OR the fret

- same concepts as the previous one

- except this technique is aiming for smaller sounds

Source:

EXPERIMENT PLAN

To find out the best setup that is able to capture the transient sound between the pick hitting the strings when it comes to strumming as comping. We would also like to find out the type of microphones that are best at picking up the mids (warm tones) and an efficient amount of the top & low frequencies.

Things to consider: Is small or large diaphragm condensers better at picking up transient sound of the pick (in other words, much clarity)? What many variations of mic placement is best at capturing a stereo sound which overall allow the pickups of the low, high but the mids most importantly?

Mic placement: Mid-Side VS Bridge-and-Fret Stereo

Mic selections: AKG C414 (figure-8 for M/S)+ C451 (Cardioid)