Recording - August 2013 - 39

Unfortunately, this is not always an option,
for a variety of reasons. There may not be
time to go back after a band tracking session
and add or redo parts. The musicians may
insist on playing all together, or be unable to
perform as well in isolation (a common
occurrence). A scratch (temporary) part
played during the main tracking session, but
intended to be replaced with a cleaner overdub later, may be deemed musically perfect,
and end up being used after all, making it
important to capture the best sound possible
even under less-than-ideal conditions. All of
these scenarios are pretty common, but
there’s always something to be done to
improve the sound of the recording.

the desired distance and position), and
the null spot (rear/side) directly faces the
source of potential leakage, and you may
achieve a surprising degree of isolation,
even when the other sound source is fairly loud. See Figure 10.
A less-ambient recording space will be
helpful here, as well as the additional use
of baffles between the musicians, as mentioned above. You may not achieve complete separation, but hope to reduce the
leakage to the point where it’s drowned
out when the guitarist is playing, and can
be edited or gated out in-between phrases (later on, in the mix, if needed), for an
acceptably clean track.

The null spot
Traditionally, the first step to minimizing
leakage is to take advantage of directional microphones’ null spots—the angle
from which those mics reject sound. Both
cardioid and bidirectional (figure-8) mics
offer this capability. Regular cardioids
pick up primarily from the front, and
reject sound from the rear (180°), hyperand supercardioids move the rejection
angle a bit more toward the sides. Bidirectional (figure-8) designs pick up
sound equally from front and rear, and
reject quite effectively from both sides
(90°). Position/angle the player and mic
so the front of the mic faces the guitar (at

The DI conundrum
Another possible solution, if available, is
to use the onboard pickup system built into
the acoustic guitar. Many fine guitars
include an onboard pickup nowadays, recognizing that in live situations, it can sometimes be the only way to amplify the guitar
without feedback and insurmountable leakage. However, if someone suggests this
option in the studio, many engineers will
cringe or make a face like they just smelled
a dead rat, and with good reason.
Traditionally, onboard acoustic guitar
pickups have provided a fairly harsh, twodimensional sound, compared with what
even a mediocre microphone recording

delivers. Piezo/bridge (contact) pickups
overemphasize the strings and attack at
the expense of fullness and body resonance, for a brittle sound, while magnetic
pickups lack crispness and air, with an
overly midrangey and often muffled sound.
However, if worse comes to worst, it
may still be possible to get a usable
sound for a recording. Remember, what
you’ve got going for you here is that the
pickup is probably in use because of isolation issues, which means that that particular guitar part is likely to be somewhat
buried in the mix later—if it was an isolated part, you’d be able to use mics
more readily, right?
If a direct input must be used from an
acoustic guitar, the first line of defense would
be eq. Depending on the type of onboard
pickup system, you could try to minimize (if
not eliminate) poor tonal balance. With
bridge piezos, a sharp cut in the upper mids,
around 4–6 kHz, may help reduce what guitarists and engineers derisively refer to as
piezo “quack”, a harsh spiky tone.
Magnetic acoustic guitar pickups, often
mounted in the soundhole, usually require
the opposite: a broad treble boost, often
combined with a lower midrange dip.
Next, a little fast-attack compression might
help tame the excess “splat” that is the other
component of piezo quack. The addition of
a little very-small-space ambience could help

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Recording - August 2013

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