mic placement for fingerstyle guitar duets

[anton]

I've got this week off work, and am trying to finish up my current recording project, a 2nd cd of celtic guitar arrangements. I want to record a second guitar on some tracks, and am wondering about mic placement.

I have been using my Gefell M300's setup as a spaced pair for all my tracks. For a second guitar part would spaced pair as well be ok, and then each guitar could be panned left/right a bit?

[sdelsolray]

Consider recording each part with just one mic.

[Doug Young]

I did the duets I did with Teja with spaced pairs on each of us. There are potential issues, tho. Using mono for each guitar seems the most obvious. I wish I'd used MS for our duets, as it lets you easy go from mono to any degree of stereo you want.

[anton]

Yea i guess that was my other thought, record each guitar mono and perhaps pan them more. I'd have to record my main part for this piece, but that is not a super big deal.

Or now that I have a 414 I could do M/S with the Gefell, and have the option to go mono. Maybe I'll try that tonight.

[rick-slo]

If you have the mikes you certainly could try a spaced pair on each instrument and make mike contribution decisions post recording. Probably more work but perhaps more post recording options.

[Doug Young]

The primary issue I've run into with using spaced pairs is that when you pan one way you get a different sound (bridge vs neck). Its rarely a big problem, because I've never wanted to pan hard left or right - usually a very small amount is all you need. And you can always flip channels if you want to pan one guitar to a side, but the other mic sounds better.

Another option that seems useful is the vertical XY setup that Bob Womack often mentions. In that mic setup, you get a stereo image, but both channels sound very similar, so when you pan to a side, you don't get the same degree of tonal change. Could be viewed as a pro or con.

Yet another approach would be to mic two guitarists with a single stereo mic setup. Many of Fran Guidry's duets with Led Kaapana are done that way. Since you're doing it alone, you could set up 2 chairs, mic as if you were micing 2 guitarists and then switch chairs between parts. That way you'd get a natural stereo soundstage for 2 guitarists, with a realistic amount of bleed on the opposing channels. I haven't tried this, tho, and it seems like a lot of work :-)

[min7b5]

Originally Posted by anton

..now that I have a 414 I could do M/S with the Gefell, and have the option to go mono..

This is my plan for recording a duo album I'm doing with Jamie Stillway in a few months.

[anton]

Got everything setup, hopefully I can get some good takes late tonight.