Thanks for the great post, Doug.
I had actually added compression and limiting... probably a bit too much of both!
Spaced pairs is a form of ORTF, right?
What about dropping the mics instead of raising them? I always use my MK-012 lowered, pointing up at the guitar when there are vocals involved. Raising it would give more bleed, but also more bass.
That picture shows exactly what my setup looks like. Except the mics are different (what mics are those anyway?).
I use a live decoder, Waves S1 Imager. it has an M-S Matrix processing bit in it, so I can directly monitor it, or put a goniometer on it (that analyzer you showed, Reaper has something like that).
I was a bit stupid, as I set the side mic (LDC) level to match the SDC when it was already rotated 90 degrees.
I've got two clean recordings of the MK-012 and the M179.
MK-012
M179
I think that's as
close as it's gonna be with these two microphones!
I will get a second MK-012 at some point though. I was told it isn't necessary to buy a matched pair, because the MK-012s appear to be consistent enough. Heck, even the matched pairs aren't matched that well (somebody told me, he has a 'matched pair').