guitar mics and preamps

[M]

I have a lovely spanish classical guitar that I want to set up so that
I can play live, but I don't want to put any pick ups into the thing
that will damage the guitar or change the sound or resonance in any
way, so I have decided to use a microphone/pre amp set up. Can anyone
suggest the best type of mic and pre amp set up. I would really prefer
a valve style analogue pre amp that is straight forward and very
simple to use but with a great sound that will really make this guitar
shine, and a microphone that fits the set up. I know this request for
advice is somewhat ambiguous but I'm not expert in this field. What I
want is to really capture the fullness and richness of this guitar. It
has a wonderful resonance and it really sings, dare I use that
overused term "warm"? well it is. So nothing too tinny. Unfortunately
I don't have a heap of cash so preferably the whole set up should not
cost more than $300(US) but if there is a set up that is really worth
it.

Micky.

[Garthrr]

In article >,
(M) writes:

>I don't have a heap of cash so preferably the whole set up should not
>cost more than $300(US) but if there is a set up that is really worth
>it.

To do it right would cost much more than this.

Garth~


"I think the fact that music can come up a wire is a miracle."
Ed Cherney

[John Halliburton]

It might cost more than $300, but start with something like a Crown CM 700
condensor mic, or one of the AT3XXX series condensors(which I think can be
purchased for under $300). I would bet this could be a very acceptable
start.

Best regards,

John

[Scott Dorsey]

John Halliburton > wrote:
>It might cost more than $300, but start with something like a Crown CM 700
>condensor mic, or one of the AT3XXX series condensors(which I think can be
>purchased for under $300). I would bet this could be a very acceptable
>start.

Good choices. The EV N/D 468 is another real sleeper that can sound great
on guitar, and it's extremely tight. Where you put the mike depends a lot
on how the guitar is balanced, of course.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Monte P McGuire]

In article >,
M > wrote:
>I have a lovely spanish classical guitar that I want to set up so that
>I can play live, but I don't want to put any pick ups into the thing
>that will damage the guitar or change the sound or resonance in any
>way, so I have decided to use a microphone/pre amp set up.

When I do live sound and someone comes in with an acoustic guitar rig
reflecting this approach (i.e. without a freaking pickup), I find that
it never sounds as good as as a cheap Takamine rig with a piezo.

Your guitar may sound absolutely amazing and we could argue about the
type of preamps to use and all these subtleties, but the fact of the
matter is that you're on stage now, and a miked acoustic is a royal
pain to use in the same room as stage monitors and the main PA
speakers. The compromises that this involves are quite likely to
negate every advantage you had by playing this precious guitar over a
competent but conventional guitar with a pickup.

Let me elaborate...

If you use a mike, you better be nearly motionless on stage, as
positioning is fairly sensitive. An inch either way and things change
a lot. Clamping the mike to the guitar would be ideal, but that voids
your "no damage" policy and forces you to use a stand mounted mike.
This does wonders for any stage presence you might have had...

I use an EV N/D 468 mike for this but if the player moves around and
the mike gets too close to the hole, it'll probably feedback somewhere
around 100-200Hz. Of course, I can start notching stuff away and
rolling LF off, but why did we go down this route? The feedback is an
artifact of using a mike with a good bit of proximity effect near a
resonant cavity, so ditch the mike and solve the problem. A freakin'
piezo won't give me that grief and actually will have a better low end
at the end of the day because of it.

I am not always so happy about the high end sound of a piezo pickup,
but with a little cut EQ anywhere from 3KHz-8KHz, it's almost always
pretty reasonable. And, if you expect any sort of gain out of the
guitar, then a mike will probably not have enough gain before
feedback.

The N/D 468 is one of the tightest mikes out there that sounds good
for guitars, but it's not magic. It's going to be almost useless if
you're playing in front of a full on rock band, and the sound person
is going to have to devote a lot of time to getting as much out of
this mike as possible while avoiding feedback, and as a result, they
won't have much time left to do other things to make you sound good.
Avoiding feedback involves pretty aggressive EQ, something that throws
you out of the 'purist' realm anyway. You're worried about a subtle
change in the way your instrument sounds because of a bridge pickup?
How about an 8dB notch at 160Hz to avoid feedback from a mike - that's
pretty non-subtle. And, this is only possible if the soundperson is
competent with EQ and the room has usable EQ - two unsafe assumptions.

Again, a nice guitar with a nice pickup is so much simpler and in my
experience, works so much better than any sort of miked guitar. Get a
second guitar for the stage and leave the precious guitar at home.
Or, realize that it's just a tool and have a competent luthier install
a nice pickup system into it. It's just a guitar... if you revere it
so much that it's not really usable, is it still actually a guitar?

If you're a solo act, then maybe a mike will work, but I've also seen
a lot of people do that purely acoustically and that's even more
clean. Cheaper too...


Best of luck,

Monte McGuire

[Michael Schultz]

Micky,

If you should come around to the point where you'll consider an
internal pickup, you can accomplish your stated aim (authentic
reproduction of the instrument's sonic character in a live performance
context) and probably stay within your budget.

But there simply isn't much to be done for a quality mic/preamp
combination in that range. The baseline for an appropriate mic would
likely be something like the Crown mentioned elsewhere or the Shure
KSM137, with either living near the $300. And there's certainly more
to be spent as you move through Schoeps, DPA, Neumann, Josephson and
others.

I can't think of a preamp below the $500 range that I would prefer to
saving a little longer for something better: at that point, offerings
from Speck, FMR and Grace are far more attractive than anything that
you might save $100 on.

Which is to say it can't be done. Give up, go and play for a while
and think on what you want. Is it a barely adequate mic/preamp set
within your current budget, or a very respectable internal pickup
system within your current budget, or is it to wait until you've
amassed $1000 or so to create a baseline "keeper" setup?

Whichever you choose, you won't find what you asked for, because the
market reality is elsewhere.

Michael

(M) wrote in message >...
> I have a lovely spanish classical guitar that I want to set up so that
> I can play live, but I don't want to put any pick ups into the thing
> that will damage the guitar or change the sound or resonance in any
> way, so I have decided to use a microphone/pre amp set up. Can anyone
> suggest the best type of mic and pre amp set up. I would really prefer
> a valve style analogue pre amp that is straight forward and very
> simple to use but with a great sound that will really make this guitar
> shine, and a microphone that fits the set up. I know this request for
> advice is somewhat ambiguous but I'm not expert in this field. What I
> want is to really capture the fullness and richness of this guitar. It
> has a wonderful resonance and it really sings, dare I use that
> overused term "warm"? well it is. So nothing too tinny. Unfortunately
> I don't have a heap of cash so preferably the whole set up should not
> cost more than $300(US) but if there is a set up that is really worth
> it.
>
> Micky.

[Garthrr]

In article >, (Monte P McGuire)
writes:

>Your guitar may sound absolutely amazing and we could argue about the
>type of preamps to use and all these subtleties, but the fact of the
>matter is that you're on stage now, and a miked acoustic is a royal
>pain to use in the same room as stage monitors and the main PA
>speakers.

Sometimes the sound of the pickup can be quite good, too. I have a client who
has several Lowden guitars and when we record him he insists on me recording
the pickup rather than using a mic (which would be a Schoeps through a Grace
pre). I have to admit the pickup sounds pretty good.

Garth~


"I think the fact that music can come up a wire is a miracle."
Ed Cherney

[Justin Ulysses Morse]

The correct solution is to perform without a PA at all. If this means
playing smaller venues, or quieter, more intimate venues, then I think
in the long run your audience will appreciate it. If Jonathan Richman
can do what he does in a crowded rock club, then a spanish guitar can
serve its typical audience in a reasonable venue without reinforcement.

Unless you're playing with a drummer, of course. In which case you
should bring a different guitar, one with a pickup.

ulysses

[Richard Kuschel]

>
>I have a lovely spanish classical guitar that I want to set up so that
>I can play live, but I don't want to put any pick ups into the thing
>that will damage the guitar or change the sound or resonance in any
>way, so I have decided to use a microphone/pre amp set up. Can anyone
>suggest the best type of mic and pre amp set up. I would really prefer
>a valve style analogue pre amp that is straight forward and very
>simple to use but with a great sound that will really make this guitar
>shine, and a microphone that fits the set up. I know this request for
>advice is somewhat ambiguous but I'm not expert in this field. What I
>want is to really capture the fullness and richness of this guitar. It
>has a wonderful resonance and it really sings, dare I use that
>overused term "warm"? well it is. So nothing too tinny. Unfortunately
>I don't have a heap of cash so preferably the whole set up should not
>cost more than $300(US) but if there is a set up that is really worth
>it.
>
>Micky.

Schoeps CMC6/41 and a Great River Preamp, but it doesn't fit your budget.
The Peavey VMP2 works well with the Schoeps also, but isn't much less
expensive.

Classic guitar is one of the more difficult instruments to obtain a decent
sound from.

For Studio, I use a modified (Neumann-Gefell valve) UM 57 and a 563 into the
Great River.
Richard H. Kuschel
"I canna change the law of physics."-----Scotty