Quote:
Originally Posted by Bowie
I hate manipulating acoustics with EQ when it's not necessary. When you have a client with moderate talents and a meager instrument in there, and time is of the essence, you track it the best you can and fix it later. But, when it's your own material and you have the ability to make adjustments, there's no reason to just EQ something because you can't be bothered to address it with the instrument, technique, or mic placement.
Keep in mind, acoustic guitar is something where, save for high pass filtering, subtractive EQing often takes away some of the important elements along with the bad so get it right at the source and EQ to fit a particular mix, not to fix a problem happening in the recording process.
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I disagree here. Just yesterday Midwinter and I put up more than a few microphones on his acoustic guitar and placed each where we thought the microphone and guitar sounded best in my pretty good sounding room. I record a TON of different acoustic guitars so I know the room and I know the mics that we using (at least the ones that I own).
The object of our little shootout was to find a microphone that would compliment his guitar, his current microphone collection, and his recording situation. We were testing under $1000 (ballpark) microphones against the mics that he currently owns.
The microphones were a Neumann TLM103, Violet Amethyst Vintage, Blue Blueberry, CAD E200 (in both cardoid and omni settings), Neumann KM184, Octava MC012, Rode M5, Little Blondies, Cascade Fathead II, Shure SM57.
I have many good EQ plugs with real-time spectral analysis, so along with our ears, we had a good spectral representation of what was going on. I can say without reservation most of all the recorded takes could have benefited from a bit of subtractive EQ, yes sometimes you can take what's special away from a track, but knowing what to listen for in the track comes with experience. You can position till the cows come home, but if the guitar or the room has certain quirks, you still need to address them at the EQ end. And in the case of the OP, if he feels the guitar has a metallic edge that he can't live with, find it, and remove it as surgically as possible.