best way to get good acoustic guitar sound

[paullb1]

I'm using the Eleven rack as my interface to Pro Tools 10 and am looking for help to get a great acoustic guitar tone through this system. Any tricks or ways you pros out there have come up with would be greatly appreciated.

[CME]

A nice condenser mic plugged into the mic preamp. For a budget suggestion a cad m179. I also heard some samples of SE's $199 ribbon mic and was impressed but never used it. I own several m179's. Anyways a nice mic placed 6-12 inches away from about where the neck meets the body usually gives a nice full tone.

[DC-Choppah]

So many issues.

I'll name a few. The resonance from the sound hole can be boomy. Try not to couple directly to that. So that means, don't get too close and don't use a mic with a strong proximity effect in range of that hole.

Do you want to record the guitar in stereo? If so, then an XY setup up in front of the instrument works. But then again a wide stereo pair could work too.

Is the room damped? Or are you also trying to pick up the room tone? In either event another stereo pair to pick up the room will always be valuable at mix time.

Always use fresh strings, but broken in. That may be the most important thing actually.

[jryser]

A good ribbon or condenser (I like the AKG 414 ULS-B) 8" away from the 12th fret. Phosphor bronze strings for silky tone. I go straight on unless in stereo, then same placement but separated to taste. Little to no EQ. MILD compression. At least for solo.

[albee1952]

One more method; 2 small condensers(Miktek C-5 are my choice) with 1 pointing at the neck/body joint, about 8-10" away and the other pointing down and placed a foot away from the player's right ear(assuming a right-handed player). As a variation on this, I will swap the "ear" mic for a figure 8 condenser(looking down/up with the null aiming at the ear/headphone). The figure 8 adds more warmth and room feel(I have a great booth). Having said all that, every method mentioned has turned in great results with a good guitar and player

[CME]

Looks like we all tend to agree on the best starting placement for the first mic. Pointing a good mic at the neck body joint (approx 12th fret), gives a nice balanced tone. How close, and which mic, depends on a lot of factors. But that really is a good place to start.

And while a second mic can be great to have. Take your time with one mic first. Get it right. And then start experimenting with a second mic. Because unless you're doing something like an XY or blumlein pair, you have to be aware of phase issues. And if you are aware of them, then fixing them before recording is simple enough. After the tracks are recording becomes much more problematic.

[GregV]

The Eleven Rack has only one mic input, right?
If your guitar has a 1/4" out, you could also record that through the guitar input. It won't sound that great on its own, but you can often EQ it to add to and enhance the mic sound. I frequently use the mic only when the guitar is clearly audible, and then blend in the 1/4" when the band "kicks in" to give it a bit more "cut".
I hope that helps

[JFreak]

If the mic you're using has figure8 pattern, that's sometimes very useful. I mean when your guitarist is a heavy breather, just point the nulling to the mouth and the eight part towards both hands. This way breath noise is eliminated and you get full sound that is not very dynamic but usually very "silky".

[Extreme Mixing]

On most of my guitars the neck actually joins the body at the 14th fret. The smaller parlor sized guitars are fairly rare. Any kind of stereo can be very big for a solo instrument. Mono and hard panned is another way to go. Or anything in between. The main thing is to have a good player, but we all know that. Different sized picks can make a huge difference in the sound.

Steve

[Craig F]

first you need a good sounding acoustic guitar in proper maintenance