| maxdimario wrote on Tue, 31 January 2006 06:25 |
The martins you buy now are dull in the mids and have a peaky high end.
the old martins can cut it (mahogany is better for rhythm).
martins seem to have a lot more bass than you need for recording, so you have to be careful about the mics etc.
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I guess this applies to all 12 million Martins and 212 models made since the 1800's hey, Max.
Fact of the matter is that the tone on any acoustic guitar changes with the position of the mic and where the ear of the listener resides. If the guitar is boomy, stick a fret mic on there, and cut the hole mic track down and you'll compensate for the boom with the fret mic, as it will only capture the highs with serious lack of low end. I'd put the fret mic as close as you can get though, because the SPL from the hole mic is going to make that track significantly hotter. On mixdown the fret mic track fader will have to be higher than the hole mic 99% of the time. For guitarists that have a problem not hearing the sound they want, a great trick that works for me is an LC placed on a large boom and over the shoulder of the guitarists strumming hand, at ear height, cardioid pattern capsule facing down and placed just in front of the plane of the front panel on the guitar and added to the fret and hole mic for 3 tracks. This will pickup the guitar from the players perspective, what he normally hears. I started doing this long ago with picky orchestra soloists that would complain about not capturing their tone. Dawned on me one day to just stick another mic near their ear and nipped that problem in the bud, but found that it worked even better on acoustic guitar for adding a natural sound. You can even add the bridge transducer if it's decent and have 4 tracks on the one acoustic guitar performance, but typically micing the hole, 12th fret and over the shoulder, works on any guitar with any performer.
On mixdown I typically pan the hole track slightly L or R of center and the fret mic opposite, eq and blend the gains so that they are equal volume in L and R. The over the shoulder mic is than mixed in "center panned", to add natural ambience and the formants from the performers perspective. Depending on the mix balance whether the hole track goes on the L or R, I tend to balance the lows and highs across the L and R axis, if there's a bass guitar on the L side slightly off center or a low synth panned L, I'll stick the hole track from the guitar on the R side and the fret track on the L.
Most of the time I use a dynamic mic on the hole. Lately I like the Audix OM-6 as it has high SPL and goes up almost as high in frequency response as a large condenser at 19kHz. Small condenser on the 12th fret like a KM184 and a U87 or Rode NTK tube for the over the shoulder mic. I typically place the hole mic close but on 45 degree axis, so that it's not directly in front of the hole, but facing it and as close as I can get it and still have the performer playing comfortably. Fret mic as close as I can get without artist bumping it and the over the shoulder about 5 inches in front of the vertical plane of the front panel of the guitar with capsule facing down about 2 feet above the hole.
If you understand what I'm relating rjd2 and you mirror my 3 mic technique, I'll guarantee you that you'll get a good sound, providing the guitar is decent to begin with.
Max this is the technique that I mentioned to you, where the guitarists have commented that the recording sounded better than the live sound.
