[Hot Vibrato]

Interesting thread...

I was bitten by the guitar bug at age 14. Fast forward thirty years, and I've been bitten by the microphone bug. I'm fascinated with these little contraptions, and like guitars, they all have their own unique sound.

I think that it's possible to get a professional result with inexpensive mics, and it is certainly possible to get amateur results from a high end mic.

The sound of the room and the position of the mic(s) is far more important than which mic you choose. The weakest link in most home recording setups (including my own) is the room acoustics. The obvious choice for recording acoustic guitar in an imperfect acoustical environment would be a directional (cardioid) mic, but an inherent trait of these mics is proximity effect - an exaggerated low end boominess which increases the closer the mic is to the source. Many mics have a low cut switch that will help reduce the boom, and some have a built in high pass filter to reduce proximity effect. Omnidirectional mics, however, are not prone to the proximity effect issue, so you can get away with placing them closer to the guitar. But in either case, the goal is to get a nice balanced recording of the guitar without too much of the room sound coming through.

So, the struggle of the acoustic guitarist who records himself in his living room or bedroom, is finding the right combination of mics and mic positioning that will give a good representation of the sound of the guitar, without sounding too boomy, and without allowing too much of the room sound in. Of course this is a compromise because of the imperfect room acoustics. When you do finally have access to a great sounding recording space, the skies will open up and the clouds will part. You can increase the miking distance, and it sounds even better, because you will now have the room working with you, rather than against you.