[Nate Najar]

a lot of you guys know what I do..... For those who don't, I play a classical guitar in a jazz group with upright bass and drums. My guitar has a quite good pickup that I do use. I have a small amplifier for times when I need one, often (if the sound reinforcement in the hall or club is proper) I will just play into the FOH and get a small amount of foldback from the pickup. Other wise I just use my amp and get on with my life.

I prefer the sound the people hear to be of a guitar, so even though my pickup is really excellent and I am pleased with its sound, I still try to use a mic also. My comments to the FOH guy (and sometimes I even carry my own FOH guy) are to "use as much of the mic as you can and then fill in the sound with the pickup. And only the pickup is to go into my wedge."

So for a mic I usually use a DPA 4061 clipped just outside the soundhole. It works very well overall. I did a date in a beautiful hall 2 week ago at a college and this was a duo just guitar and bass, so I brought my schoeps instead. It worked quite well, but there were no drums. It did sound much better than the dpa did. I am sure that has mostly to do with placement than anything.

The problem with the dpa is that there is not really a great place to mic a guitar "on the instrument" but if I put the mic too far away, it gets more room and spill and less guitar. And in a large hall especially, spill is boomy instead of clean (because large halls sound great for solo guitar but awful with a drumset, even played lightly!)

The problem with the schoeps is that the proximity effect is really strong on my mk41 (the only one I own) and so to get it to sound good, I have to pull it away further than is optimal for spill..... With a good console that can be eq'd but considering both many of the technicians I encounter and some of the consoles i see, it is better to get it right at the source.

Now to be clear, in the grand scheme both these options work well but I am sure I can do better with the proper mic choice and placement.... I am wondering if anyone thinks on omni on a stand might do the trick- I can get it far enough away from the box to get more of the sound, but keep it close enough that my body and the guitar still act as a gobo, etc.... Or, should I get an mk4 capsule for my schoeps so I can put it closer? Or is there a better suggestion I am not thinking of? I am becoming a huge fan of omnis these days the more I learn how to properly use them, and on a stage the way my band is setup, rear rejection isn't really needed.... there is no wedge feeding the mic signal back into the mic!

so, any thoughts?

On another note, the Barbera pickup with the Red Eye DI/preamp is the greatest sounding "electronic" solution I have ever encountered.... and the red eye works incredibly on magnetic pickups too!

thanks!

N