Recording acoustic guitars (and other perfect-room issues)

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Yeah. Sort of a tips and tricks thing. Up until recently, when I recorded acoustic stuff it was usually for the purpose of chopping it up amid electronics to add more organic texture -- so it actually kinda helped if the recording sounded roomy or hissy or bedroom-like. But lately I keep wanting to record "proper" acoustics -- clean, clear, solid, confined -- and I haven't yet figured out the best method.

Of course, I'm also working with limited materials -- a cheapish omnidirectional mic and an even more cheapish unidirectional one. I set the uni up a few inches from where the guitar neck meets the body, pointing straight in, and the omni a few inches back, angled toward the body; they both run in through a 4-track with a little gain and a significant cut to the low end (which otherwise swells out and muddies up). But the sound tends to be way too roomy and unruly, too much space and not enough clean punch. Moving the mics back and moving them away from the soundhole has helped with the muddiness but loses even more punch; covering over the soundhole leaves the whole thing trebly, all pick-scratching and not enough actual tone.

So I can do all kinds of processing to get closer -- EQ, compression, and limiters to carve out the "extra" sound, and then careful reverb to bring some of it back -- but I wonder if there are any tricks here that can get a better sound from the start. I would just buy a pickup for the guitar, but the sub-question here is that I'd like some good methods for recording sounds-in-the-room in general.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 22 November 2005 19:07 (nineteen years ago)

Pickups for guitars often sound kind of weird & plasticy to me, I must admit. The result often sounds like a DX7 acoustic guitar program, rather than an actual guitar.

anyway, I had the exact same problem. I printed out and read this article from "Sound on Sound" magazine, and followed the instructions there. The sound I get now is not perfect by any means, but it's about a thousand times better than what I had.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 22 November 2005 19:21 (nineteen years ago)

yeah, pickups never seem to capture the sound right.

― AaronK (AaronK), Tuesday, 22 November 2005 19:51 (nineteen years ago)

Easy, just build a new room with no standing waves.

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 22 November 2005 20:15 (nineteen years ago)

Thanks, Pash! And aha: omni way up on the neck, uni aimed below soundhole, and that's a great start -- perfect for a natural in-the-room sound, almost kinda Phil Elvrum about it, and particularly good for riffs instead of chords. Now I just need a sound that's clean enough to layer up without creating a whole new "room" with each take. Gonna have to try one of the article's suggestions, too -- I'm curious about this putting the microphones above and behind the guitar thing, up around my head.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 22 November 2005 20:16 (nineteen years ago)

Also, apparently wood floors are key.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 24 November 2005 00:35 (nineteen years ago)

i got a really lovely acoustic sound recently using a mixture of sansamp acoustic DI and an AT4040 pointed where the neck meets the body. i probably could have gotten an even nicer sound if i'd taken a bit more time but it was just for a demo.

― jim p. irrelevant (electricsound), Thursday, 24 November 2005 00:38 (nineteen years ago)

Wood floors aren't necessarily a good thing across the board, but they have different reflective properties than tile or cement or carpet, and on the whole their particular brand of reflection sounds better than any other options most of the time.

The most common problem with room sound for most small or home studios is that the room's got parallel walls and is just too damned small. Throw an omni mic into that equation, and you have a recipe for frustration.

Also, some pickups can capture the sound of an acoustic amazingly well but only if they are DI'd into a very good preamp. Most of the shit out there that is sub-$1000 is not going to cut it... A transducer recorded direct into an Avalon, on the other hand, very well may blow somebody's socks off. (That said, yes, many magnetic pickups cannot sound exactly like an acoustic no matter what you do.) I have recorded electric guitar directly into an API 3124 and had people ask what amp and mic I used to "get that sound." No, it's not the same as acoustic, but my point is that you can get amazing sounds direct if you have good equipment. Unfortunately, "good" in preamp land usually means around $700+ a channel with some exceptions.

― martin m. (mushrush), Saturday, 26 November 2005 19:24 (nineteen years ago)

one month passes...

Get aother cheapish unidirectional mic--point it at the upper fretboard. Point your other uni at the guiatr's body, near the bridge. Place the omni above the guitarist, poiting down. Radically cut the boomy low end you're going to get.

The problem with acoustics is they're all high end attack and round-y bottom. So I'd double them with a DI'ed electric for some mid-presense--espcially if you're going to put them in a mix with other instruments.

― ian in Brooklyn, Monday, 16 January 2006 19:09 (nineteen years ago)

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