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  #91  
Old 07-10-2012, 07:17 AM
Ty Ford Ty Ford is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug Young View Post
Schoeps CM6/MK41s are a "lifetime" mic, and I'm sure Ty would agree here, at least.
I would!

Regards,

Ty Ford
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  #92  
Old 11-27-2012, 12:01 AM
Gregg Carter Gregg Carter is offline
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Doug, I love this sort of comparison. Controlled experiment with the only difference being the mics. To my ear, I love B, but I can see how someone else would find A just a lovely. Fantastic song and fantastic playing. Thanks for sharing!

Gregg


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Originally Posted by Doug Young View Post
Bob, you've sort of gotten the advice I'd give scattered thru out this thread, but let me make a stab at it in one place. Rather than ask "what mic", I'd step back and as "how can I best record my guitar?" given my setup. The full answer could get long, but basically, my suggestions would be:

- Fix the noise in your room - really simple, turn the humidifier off while you're recording. These are just the things we have to do in a home environment. I have to turn off air conditioning, wait for the gardeners to stop the leaf blowers, get my wife to turn down (or off) the TV in the other room. I've gone as far as throwing the breakers for every room in my house except my recording room when I could get away with it, to kill all the little noise makers in the house :-). Overkill, but you get the idea.

- Fix the acoustics in your room if needed. You don't have to get crazy and acoustically treat your whole room, but if it's too reflective, trying to tame it a bit, even a rug, pillows and so on may help a little. Try different spots in the room. Check out Fran Guidry's blog on use just 2 acoustic panels to create a better sound: http://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2011/...oadband-panels
Note - this addresses the "reflective" part of your issue, not ambient noise. But something like this is cheaper, easier to store, and likely to work better than a reflexion at creating a local acoustic space.

- Finally, record in stereo, and given your room acoustics, plan on close micing. For "capturing the beautiful tones", stereo will go an immensely long way. Mics matter way less than people will lead you to believe. They're all different, but the difference is subtle, something you come to appreciate with a lot of experience, when you get really picky. But it tends to be splitting hairs - especially in the narrow application of recording acoustic guitar, trying to go from a 99% sound to a 99.9% sound. Going from mono to stereo, tho, is huge.

It sounds like you were hoping some mic would magically ignore your room acoustics, but as others have said, any mic that picks up the nuances of your guitar will also pick up every nuance of your room, for better or worse. I would recommend a cardiod - directional mic - in your case, and there are also hypercardiods that reject the most sound from behind. But again, we're talking about moving the needle by a fraction of a percent, not a night and day difference, and just rejecting from the rear won't fix noise in a reflective room.

Everyone loves to recommend their favorite mics,of course. But just as an example of the differences between mics, here's a recording with 2 pairs of large condenser mics. I recorded these simultaneously with identical signal chains, and the mics side by side each other. No processing, no EQ, no reverb, no "studio tricks", just the raw sound of these mics. One set cost $5K each and are pretty highly regarded mics for guitar. The other pair retail for $100 each (I got them for $50), and no one here would dare recommend them for guitar- just not fashionable or cool. Can you tell which is which?

A
B

There are differences in mics, especially if you look at different types (ribbons, dynamic, etc), but perhaps this will set expectations of the kind of difference mics can make.

Last edited by Gregg Carter; 11-27-2012 at 09:41 PM.
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