A couple of more Zoom questions

[TBman]

When recording with the Zoom mics how far back from the guitar do you put your zoom and do you offset off the sound hole towards the neck or lower bout?

[DukeX]

You just need to experiment. 12" out from the neck joint is a good place to start.

[sdelsolray]

There are many positions that work well. Your personal choice should decide, along with your musical styles and execution. The father back you go (to a limit), the more authentic the recording, unless your room acoustics interfere too much.

Put another way, what other folks choose to do should be discounted, not because of any "right or wrong", but because of personal preference, differing music and room acoustics.

DukeX put it well, "You just need to experiment".

[TBman]

Thanks guys.

[Andy Howell]

Experiment is right but I reckon a foot or a foot and a half from the 12th fret or join will see you OK.

Those Zoom mics are pretty extraordinary for the price! Normally I use a pair of Beyerdynamic small condensers. These are great but they have a big range and need quite a lot of bass and low mods taken out. The zoom mics while not as fine don’t need half as much eq work!

The Zoom is a great piece of kit.

[TBman]

Thanks again.

I ordered a couple of those 1/4 20 male and 5/8 female adapters so I can mount the zoom on one of my desktop mic stands.

[Vindellama]

Aiming at the 12th fret didn' work for me.
You can turn it to balance the input of both capsules, but it always sounded way too bright for me.

The mic capsule is in XY. If you aim at the 12th fret, one of the mics will be pointing towards the soundhole and the other at the middle of the neck.
Try to set it in a way that one is pointing at the bridge and the other at the neck joint.

I just do the same thing that got me the best result without reading about aiming at the 12th fret...
Aim right at the middle between the bridge and the neck joint, and change the distance until one is aiming at the bridge and one to the neck joint, and then I turn it around a bit until the lvls of both mics match:

[TBman]

Originally Posted by Vindellama

Aiming at the 12th fret didn' work for me.
You can turn it to balance the input of both capsules, but it always sounded way too bright for me.

The mic capsule is in XY. If you aim at the 12th fret, one of the mics will be pointing towards the soundhole and the other at the middle of the neck.
Try to set it in a way that one is pointing at the bridge and the other at the neck joint.

I just do the same thing that got me the best result without reading about aiming at the 12th fret...
Aim right at the middle between the bridge and the neck joint, and change the distance until one is aiming at the bridge and one to the neck joint, and then I turn it around a bit until the lvls of both mics match:

Thanks, I'll try that.

[Doug Young]

For X/Y in general, I've had the best luck centering on the guitar right *above* the soundhole, about even with the waist. You can get more or less low end by changing the vertical positioning. That 12-fret recommendation you always hear seems to be best for a jangly sound, like a rhythm guitar in a rock track, where you want a stringy sound that cuts thru. For fingerstyle, it doesn't usually sound good to me, and it's hard to get a balanced sound (left to right). Centering on the guitar gets you a balanced sound. Going up above (or below) the soundhole avoids the boom of the soundhole.

12 inches out is a good starting point. It will vary with your guitar, room, and personal taste.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

That 12-fret recommendation you always hear seems to be best for a jangly sound, like a rhythm guitar in a rock track, where you want a stringy sound that cuts thru. For fingerstyle, it doesn't usually sound good to me, and it's hard to get a balanced sound (left to right). Centering on the guitar gets you a balanced sound. Going up above (or below) the soundhole avoids the boom of the soundhole.

12 inches out is a good starting point. It will vary with your guitar, room, and personal taste.

Haven't tried any XY so far, but this makes sense to me
I would speculate that is exactly right, the whole 12 fret thing came out of the recording industry from the 60' -80's where getting some string attack would help the acoustic not get lost in the mix, and it was more often than not recorded with a single SDC for that reason.

[Andy Howell]

Originally Posted by Vindellama

The mic capsule is in XY. If you aim at the 12th fret, one of the mics will be pointing towards the soundhole and the other at the middle of the neck.
Try to set it in a way that one is pointing at the bridge and the other at the neck joint.

This is right. Aiming straight at the Soundhole might give better results than people think. Bear in mind though that the coverage of the two mics is quite wide.

Try experimenting with the Nashville set up that Bob advocates. This would mean aiming at the join or 12th fret but with the zoom on its side. In this seat up neither mic is pointing decisively at the sound hole. I find this setup with external mics to be very effective, though placement is more critical if you play sitting — breathing noise can be a problem.

I do think these mics are good and they seem to need less eq processing than more expensive small diaphragms, but then again the sound will be thinner. Horse for courses I think.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by Andy Howell

This is right. Aiming straight at the Soundhole might give better results than people think.

One key here is that with XY (and more so with ORTF), you're not aiming into the soundhole, you're basically straddling it. but because cardiod patterns aren't as sharp as people think, you will still likely get a pretty boomy sound directly in front of the soundhole, which is why I go above it. You have to experiment with the height, but I almost always find that right at the top of the waist sounds right to me. You can basically use vertical position as a tone/boom control.

A variation on this that I've had good luck with, (tho not applicable to the Zoom), is MidSide, especially with larger mics. With the Mid mic above the soundhole, and the top of the guitar, and the side mic right in front of the soundhole, the soundhole is in the null of the figure-8 side mic. It allows me to pick up the body very directly, centered on the guitar without being boomy.

On the 12-fret advice, I read a funny article some years ago in one of the recording magazines, titled something like "10 best tips for recording acoustic guitar" and a famous engineer was going thru all kinds of techniques, some of which were intriguing. Then I got to the end of the article where he said something like "These ideas are guaranteed to work, unless you're doing something absolutely crazy that no one ever does, like recording solo acoustic guitar". Oops. Just a reminder that 99.99% of the music world uses acoustic guitar as a minor component of a multi-instrument recording, and that most advice you hear is about getting that sound.

[Mr. Jelly]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Just a reminder that 99.99% of the music world uses acoustic guitar as a minor component of a multi-instrument recording, and that most advice you hear is about getting that sound.

I get it. It all depends on what you are going to do with the sound. My problem has always been to many choices. I put the mics here and I like certain aspects of the sound, but not all. I put the mics there and like certain aspects of the sound but, again, not all. In the end I'm settling on a sound and lose my passion for recording and forget it for awhile. If I could just settle on "a" sound I'd record a mountain of material. I'm about ready to dismantle my recording studio.