Recording Acoustics - Mic technique

Also, what about distance? And gain? I've always just kept the mic about 8in to a foot/foot1/2 away...Never really pulled the mic(s) far away and cranked the gain...Of course, my room isn't particularly a performance room.

Interested in this as well. I end up falling back to one mic most of the time just to make things easy. And like JK, I like to double parts and throw in variation to add interest. I usually send all acoustic parts panned out to a stereo bus and add reverb/effects in parallel on another stereo bus. That desirable huge sound can be elusive though. I need to play well, or it just sounds like a loose mess. Also, I am working on controlling string noise, something I never notice when gigging.

2 mics, both Oktava MK012s. One right around the bridge, another about the 12th fret, both angled in slightly. Usually around 12" back, sometimes less or more depending on the loudness of the person playing. I'll pan these 3/4 to full left and right and let the distance of the mics from each other create the narrow stereo sound. I've not had a single complaint yet. In fact I get a lot of compliments.

These go into 312s for some mid thickness, and usually some compression, and then for EQ I usually boost 7K shelf, somewhere around 2K-3K for some articulation and cut narrow somewhere around 200-300 to get rid of the boom. I might boost 150 and below with a shelf for thickness. this usually sits very well with the vocals.

I might set up some LDCs in the room for some room tone, which can help thicken some bright acoustics. I'll just bus these together with the main mics and compress through a bus compressor.

If you want the WIDEST stereo image that's still mono collapsable, you play the same part twice, but reverse the mic. So think of an X/Y, right? Only you use the mic in one of the positions for the first track...second in the second position.

Widest without compatibility, you can spread the mics some and use a continuous phase adjuster plug on the two mics to find the widest spread--but, since it doesn't collapse, it can't be holding down the arrangement, so it needs to be for the kind of "harmonic high hat" effect.

You're right!

Ooooo...I kinda like using the ribbon for the side...feels way more natural than other times I've used M/S with two condensers...

BTW - I opened the MXL box, screwed the shockmount to the stand, tried to tighten the nut on the shockmount and the cheap Chinese metal dissolved like butter. Nice. I jerry rigged the mic up and used it.

For stereo recordings, there are two techniques that are awful hard to beat:
1. Blumlein, 2 figure of 8s in XY stereo about 18" to 24" back from a center point aimed at the 17th fret in parallel alignment to the plane of the floor. LDCs excel here.
2. One SDC aimed at a slight angle downward at the neck body joint about 12-18"back, another SDC or an LDC looking over the shoulder of the player aimed at the bridge, "looking" at it, at a 10º to 15º angle.

The Blumlein is an incredible sound because it's a real stereo technique that collapses well but when collapsed to mono, retains all the information. The balance of direct and reflected signal can really give you a brilliant sense of space. It can be a really big sound and fill up a lot of the sonic real estate in a beautiful way. The problem with MS is that it isn't really a true stereo technique but a simulated one... now stay with me here. The sides are captured with ONE Figure 8 microphone that is feeding the signal to both sides in positive and negative phase. This is a psycho-acoustic pseudo-stereo effect. When summed to mono, the sides are obviously canceled out. Thus leaving only the mono single point source and then that becomes critical that it is pointed at the neck/body joint and provides the basis for most of what you wish to hear. But just think about it... true stereo is two coincident sources. MS is not two coincident sources, it is ONE source with the phase flipped on one side. Now, it can be argued that it sounds good, and certainly it can. But it isn't actual stereo.

LDC pointed at the body about a foot away, SDC at the 12th fret as close as I can get it.

TLM 49 sucks major ass here to my ears.

i dig the ribbon there also, gives the pseudo stereo image a deepness because the roll off on the hi's make the S sound farther away, especially with a C12 mid. It's indeed a versatile technique, fader set just right, it definitely strikes me as natural sounding as well 8)

I see the Blumlein/MS thing had already been cleared up... : )

I have had great results placing a ribbon and a condenser together and mixing both signals to get a good balance of air and detail and "physicality" and girth.

I usually like to record acoustics in the room with the liveliest acoustic response and add a couple of room mics. The delayed omnis on the floor technique usually works well.

In my previous post I typed "decade" and meant "decode." Ridiculous.

ward, I would argue that your assessment is not entirely accurate. M/S IS two coincident sources. You place the mics as close together as possible, just like Blumlein or XY. It's a coincident mic technique. You're not "just" flipping the phase on one side, either. There's a matrix that sums or subtracts with the Mid mic. It's not the same as taking a random cardioid mic in the room and putting it + on the Left and - on the Right. That would also cancel out when you sum to mono like M/S, and it would have an "out-of-speaker" wideness sea-sickness thing going on. A bi-directional mic will actually pickup the room sound differently on the left and right. It's true stereo. Yes, it fully cancels the S mic when you sum to mono, but that doesn't mean there aren't volume and timing differences between the two sides of the figure 8, which is the basis for stereo mic techniques.