Miniflex in Taylor with ES

[open-road-matt]

I have the short mic pointed at the soundboard and the long mic pointed at the sound hole.

I haven't been too specific about placement. After I got the strings tuned up the first time and played a little, I did loosen the strings and give each mic a little curve and tweaked the placement a bit.

I'm using the Model 1 as a second source and I couldn't be happier! I play nylon strings with a flat pick and I've tried at least 10 different crossover guitars and this is the first time I've been happy with my plugged in strumming sound!

If I was using just the MiniFlex I would probably spend more time experimenting with mic placement just to see if there might be more of a sweet spot but my guitar time has been limited lately and since I really like what I'm hearing with the dual source I've just been enjoying that.

Hope that helps a bit,
Matt

[Ken Donnell]

It has been my experience that mic placement for the 2mic design becomes a bit more complicated in these situations due to possible phasing issues with the pickup. This is not a significant issue, but we have received many reports from 2Mic users that they needed to spend a bit more time with mic placement when used with a pickup, than when the 2Mic is used alone. When the 2Mic is not the only source, it is probably best to keep the mic on the the short gooseneck under the bridge, and as close to the soundboard as possible (one half inch). Point this mic towards the soundboard, but slightly off axis (not pointed directly towards the soundboard). Then experiment with placing the mic on the long gooseneck in a variety of positions near the soundhole until you achieve the sound you want. If this is not successful, then re-position the mic under the bridge, and repeat placing the mic in the soundhole in a variety of positions. To help with determining the direction of there is a small bump just below the windscreen that one can feel with the fingers to determine the direction of the mic under the bridge.

[lur3nj14]

I finally got around to get the Miniflex installed, played a set today with it and with very little fiddling I'm already very satisfied with the tone that I'm getting blending it with the Taylor ES that I already have.

Here are two direct-feed snippets of the blend, for anyone who's interested.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/136917/musi...my%20cycle.m4a
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/136917/musi...a%20friend.m4a
[scrub to about 40 seconds in, the engineer forgot to turn me up. I was in drop C for this part, the blend between ES's magnetic bass warmth + air from Miniflex mics is quite nice]

Because I don't have a analog blender/preamp, I used the onboard DSP mixer on my MOTU Ultralite Mk3 to EQ and blend. The output than goes through my pedal board with reverb. The recording is taken from the webcast of the house of prayer that I played at, which gets a split signal mixed by a separate engineer than the FOH engineer.

I was originally afraid of feedback hazard because I'm basing my blending mix solely on the Miniflex, with some mid dips and slight treble boost to eliminate boxiness, while the ES signal is low pass at around 400 Hz. But we run the FOH around 70-90db with Roland RSS's on stage for in-ear monitoring and there was zero feedback on my guitar.

[Ken Donnell]

Thanks for posting the clips, I would love to hear more as you become more familiar with the MiniFlex. - Ken