General Recording Discussion > Microphone Choice and Techniques

3 mics for acoustic?

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stainless:
I 'normally' just use 2: a LDC on the soundhole and an SDC for the neck (towards the nut)- both ~ 12" off the guitar.... but I'm wondering about adding a 3rd, just as a 'room' mic?

or going a step beyond and using a stereo X/Y, etc?

any thoughts??

I'm asking because I'm rather lazt and coming up with odd ideas is much easier  >:D

SafeandSoundMastering:
I think you should definately give it a try, nothing to lost in experiementing and supplimenting your usual technique.
Most of the recordings I have made used a similar mic set up to yourself. 5-6 inches from the body of the guitar, tending towards the end of the guitar and then one towards the neck near where it meets the body. Tends to get good results IMO.

A room mic might be nice to have but like any multi miking just check the phase of the more distant mic with the 2 that are in place.

cheers

stainless:
a room mic (single of stereo) didn't seem to add that much to make it worth the set-up time,

I suppose if I had a large room it might add something

SafeandSoundMastering:
Well it's good to try these things out and yes remaining open minded for different situations is a good plan.
I generally tend to use 2 mics wherever possible on ac. gtr unless spill from other instruments is getting a bit much, and of course
tend only to use 1 mic per guitar if there are 2 people playing with a touch of panning for some spread.

cheers

stainless:
With singer/songwriters the usual plan is set up the click (assuming they can play to a click)  ::)

then record a scratch vocals and guitar, using the same mic set-up I'd used for acoustic (LDC & SDC) mainly to save time, as next I record the acoustic, having only to re-adjust the mics and retrack the acoustic (this sasme set-up works well with cello, fiddle, mando... any acoustic strings

then for the I change to a pair of LDC (currently my favorite is a pair of Russian Oktava MK-319's modded by Michael Jolie) in an X/Y panned not quite symmetrically opposing-

then we move on with the tune

IF it's a band that uses an acoustic I'll put the acoustic in the control room with me as there's no way to completely isolate the drums in the main room (the electric guitar(s), bass) and keys are all DI'd . And generally I retrack the guitarist(s) through live amps, but for the "live fee" scratch this works better

then I have a couple of folks who want everything individually tracked, building off a simple scratch

I just got an Rode NTK from an acquaintance (be here next week) and I may try pairing that with  a Karma K-58 tube mic (with a NOS RCA tube, stock tube was really grainy) to see what type of texture using 2 different tube mics gets me

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