Ok... Now I can Use Some Help

[bobc]

Now that I have a studio mic (Sterling ST55 larg diaphram condensor), how do I get the best resuts with it?

I want to set it up so it picks up my guitar and voice at the same time. I have been setting it up about a foot in front of me at about mouth level and angled very slightly downward. I can get a pretty good sound, but the guitar sounds just a little boxy. Is this because the sound is bouncing off the walls and back into the mic?

How do I eliminate the slight boxyness?

I also noticed that I can plug my guitar in to another channel and get the mixture of the guitar pickup along with the mic'd sound, and by using the channel fader, I can blend the right amount of pickup in.

Is this something that people commonly do?

Until now I have been using stage mics to record so I'm kinda new to using a real recording mic.

Any helpful tips would be appreciated.

Thank you.

[sdelsolray]

SUggestions:

1. Make 5 or 6 recordings using different mic placements for the single ST55 mic. Measure the distance, height, etc. of the mic. Write it down. Listen to the different takes after recording all of them. Be your own critic of the recordings. You will likely prefer one or some over the others.

2. Try recording two or three channels. Two mics. One mic plus your pickup. Etc. Try different placements, etc. as above. Rinse, wash and repeat.

3. After you have found some good transduer choices (i.e., mic or mics, pickup, whatever) and you have found good mic placement(s), then work on adding eq, compression, effects etc. to your mix.

4. You should track so that your tracks' peaks do not exceed -12 dbfs, to give you additional headroom for post recording processing. Final mix should have peaks at about -3 dbfs or so.

[Rick Shepherd]

Bob, just a couple weeks ago I tried something a little different. I purchased a Shure SM7b dynamic mic. This mic is a good choice for situations where you need more isolation from other sources of sound. Anyway, I used it for vocals. Then, I set up my LDC for the guitar and recorded that way. The result was pretty good! Have a listen:Grandma's Feather Bed

I think I am going to do alot more experimenting with recording this way because it alows me to let go and have fun without having to record separate tracks. For some songs, recording guuitar first, then vocal next is the preferred method, but other songs seem best recording guitar and vocals at the same time.