Recording - August 2013 - 35

acoustic guitar recording. So in this article I’ll focus more on mic
positioning as the key to capturing the best sound from a specific guitar in a specific room.
Obviously, the easy trick of just sticking a mic an inch from the
speaker, so often cited and employed by engineers after electric
guitar tones, is not applicable when it comes to the acoustic flavor
of the instrument. First off, the player tends to move the instrument
around a bit (even a seated player trying to stay still for a recording), and his/her hands are moving up and down the fretboard,
not to mention strumming motions—you don’t want that delicate
condenser mic to be sent flying across the room when some
wannabe Pete Townshend decides to do a few acoustic windmills!
But more seriously, the sound waves coming off the strings
and body of an acoustic in all directions need space to blend.
The gold standard for acoustic guitar close-miking distance is
about a foot away—this provides enough room for the player,
as well as picking up a better tonal balance from the combination of the guitar strings and body. A mic at 12" is the typical
starting point—in individual cases, distance can then be adjusted by ear, until the best overall tone is heard. See Figure 2.
Are you lookin’ at me?
Now, novices to the art of recording acoustic guitar often
assume that the obvious place to point the mic would be the
sound hole—after all, isn’t that where the best/fullest sound is
supposed to be coming from? Well, it is an option, but as often
as not, pointing a mic at the sound hole, even from a foot away,
tends to capture too much “boom”.
Mics are typically positioned (again, about a foot or so away),
somewhere between the 12th fret of the guitar and the back of the
instrument, by the bridge. Many engineers feel that the 12th-fret
position is the best option, and that’s probably the “go-to” spot for
most recordists. At the 12th fret, you’ll get a nice crisp string sound,
so it’s also common to angle the mic in toward the body to add
more fullness. If you were to position a mic there, and then gradually move it towards the back of the guitar (maintaining the same
distance, adjusting the angle as you go), you’d hear gradual
changes in tonal balance: extra boom as you pass the soundhole,
and then a more midrangey presence as you approach the bridge
and rear bout of the instrument. See Figure 3.
Any of these positions can provide a good balance—what
works best in a particular situation will depend on the mic, the
room, the overall tone of the guitar itself, and, of course, the
player. For example, I would often position my studio’s U87 a
foot or so out, angled at the bridge of a client’s Taylor guitar (a
bright, crisp instrument) to get more of the body resonance, but
the same mic gave better results angled in at the 12th fret with
another client’s Gibson jumbo (a larger-bodied, warmer, fuller
sounding guitar), to avoid picking up too much body and an
overly-boomy quality. Of course, your mileage will vary—visit
recordingmag.com/videos: Acoustic Guitar video Part 1 to see
and hear a comparison of different positions with the same mic.
When it comes to acoustic guitar, miking from a foot or so away
still constitutes close-miking, but it’s possible to use more distant placements as well. A more ambient sound can be captured by pulling the
mic back to three or four feet, assuming that the extra distance does
not exacerbate room issues like leakage or flutter echoes. A mic
could also be placed in an overhead position, a couple feet above
and just to the front of the player’s head (AG video Part 1)—think of
this as the equivalent of the overhead mics that provide air and depth
when recording an acoustic drum kit. See Figure 4.
Of course, just as with electric guitar (and drum kit) miking,
you can combine multiple mics for a richer sound. And speaking of which...
The more the merrier
If you decide to employ more than one mic, there are two ways you
can approach this: two mics can be arrayed for stereo recording, or
the mics can be combined in mono (as described in the electric guitar

Figure 3. Here’s where you should first try aiming your mics if
you’re using more than one: the 12th fret and the bridge area of
the guitar. These are Shure KSM141 mics.

article), simply to bring a rich blend
of different tonalities to the overall
recorded sound. Let’s look at the
mono approach first.
The most typical ways to combine two mics on acoustic guitar
would be to either set up a closer
mic and a distant mic, or to set two
closer mics at different positions in
front of the guitar between the
12th fret and the bridge. With
either choice, it’s important to
Figure 4. Miking over the shoulder
can produce a realistic player’s-perspective tone.

Figure 5a. In this two-mic recording, the neck mic’s audio (lower track)
is about 1 millisecond ahead of the bridge mic’s audio (upper track).

Figure 5b. We select the neck mic track and drag it backwards in time...

Figure 5c. ... until the two signals are time-aligned. No more phase
problems!
RECORDING August 2013

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Recording - August 2013

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