I´m struggling with my guitar sound, dont really seem to get it right. In this case, a steel string acoustic guitar. And yes, I understand that what goes in is first priority (playing style, mic etc and I do my best to try to get that right). In any case, I am after a clean and crisp sound with not to much sound from the pick or from the left hand fingers sliding on the neck when changing chords.
Until now I have tried to identify unwanted dissonance with the help of EQ (peak, lowering at frequences whith much dissonance) and also with the multilevel envelope shaper. Also I try to ad a good sounding reverb to take out some hard corners and get som atmosphere to the sound.
Though, the result is still to harsh to my liking.
Do any of you out there have some helpful suggestions on how to go about this? Thanks a lot in advance!
A condenser mic 3ft away, slightly above, and angled down towards the soundhole - this will give you air and presence. But what we then need is body.
If your guitar is an electro-acoustic, then simply blend the condenser with the onboard electronics. If not, then a Fishman soundhole pick-up is a good idea, and blend that with the condenser.
I used a £50 B-Band stick-on piezo pick-up under the bridge inside the guitar instead of a mic, no electronics, and blended that with a cheap, £30 generic Fishman copy that clamped across the soundhole. Both pickups went direct into a cheap Behringer 2-ch mic preamp. The one with a single valve on the front. This then fed a dual 31-band EQ, and then a stereo compressor. The results were incredibly good, especially with no microphone involved. Pick noise and scraping is then minimal, and you don’t have to be so rigid about extraneous noise input.
Bare minimum - you can get away with both pickups direct into your soundcard high-Z mic inputs, and use plugins of choice.
It should sound amazing first, long before you reach for the Reverb.
Cool. Bear in mind that an acoustic guitar has it’s own built-in reverb by it’s nature. Using pickups alone removes that somewhat from the equation - so I would tend to add small amounts of Abbey Road Chambers until I can hear the guitar resonating the space. Then back it off. In this way, initial attacks are full and dry, but the decays of notes bloom into the subtle ambience. Use sensible compression to control the onset of the synthetic ambience, and you have everything you need.
The advantage of this is that your solo mono guitar track is now a localised 3D stereo image in your soundstage. With controllable width.
Use a SDC , like an AKG 451 etc and point it where the neck meets the body , usually 14th fret. The sound hole generally is a bad place to point a mic on an acoustic guitar IMHO.
here’s my 1965 Gibson Coiuntry and western recorded this way on a recent album
For single mic use, you are correct. 14th fret is better. But it will pick up loads of undesirable dynamics from the strings. Normally the soundhole is mic’d close with a 414 or something, and you can point a condenser right at it from 3ft away, or towards the 14th fret - whatever works best for you on the day. Condenser must not be in direct line with the soundhole though, I think that’s what you meant.
I prefer to work with fundamentals. Get those right and then everything else is do-able. It will always sound like an acoustic guitar, whatever you do. But making £200 Peaveys sound like Martins was my bread and butter at one point.
Btw Norbury - I live East of Ely in the UK! Lot of extra noise on that recording. Are you sure you haven’t got birds nesting inside that Gibson?
great . we have a place by the sea in Happisburgh where the basis of this album was germinated , and some if it recorded. Trev my musical patner in Miracle mile spends time in Walberswick where a lot of the lyrics were written…..Hence the East of Ely album title
All the major stuff was obviously done in my Studio in London … but that Noth Norfolk coast has found a place in my heart over the last 5 years we’ve been there. I’m even an honorary local now in the village pub
Hi,
the position of the condensor mic can be relativly open to experiments depending on your mic. E.g., if you use a small condensor mic you might want to position it a tat closer to the body away from the hole. Tiny position changes have quite the impact - just try a few things and see how it sounds.
Reducing sliding noises
First of all, technique, yes. But you can also try
GHS Fast Fret
Ballistol oil, more about cleaning but also reduces sliding noises
baby powder (talcum).
Disclaimer: An old tracking engineer once told me about baby powder as a secret weapon or a last resort. Might be worth a try, I am not going to promote the idea, just listing different options here.
great . we have a place by the sea in Happisburgh where the basis of this album was germinated , and some if it recorded. Trev my musical patner in Miracle mile spends time in Walberswick where a lot of the lyrics were written…..Hence the East of Ely album title