We were recording an old Gibson SJN a few months back....looking for
that early 70s stones sort of sound. Used a Royer 121 about 3-4 feet
away sort of pointing near where the neck meets the body. We actually
used the back side of the mic. It gave us exactly the sound we were
after. It helped that we were using the right guitar for the
job....and a good player that totally has that ragged feel that the
stones did back then.
later,
m

I understand you are in a classroom situation but I thought that
typically you would not tend to point a single mic at the soundhole -
too much boom. Rather (just rule of thumb mind you) point it at the
portion of the neck just up from the sound hole. All of which depends
on the type of music/style of playing (e.g. single note picking,
finger picking, strumming, smashing a la Pete Townshend) and where the
guitar is supposed to sit in the mix. I've heard that when acoustic
guitar is used as a rhythm instrument in a band mix, often much of the
bass is cut out so you're just left with the strummy sound but you
eliminate potential for midrange mud.

I think the proximity effect (bass boost) is mostly a result of a
directional mic pattern.

I don't own a ribbon mic so cannot comment on your specific
conclusion, just that I didn't think that pointing the mic right at
the soundhole was the way to get the most balanced sound from an ac.
gtr.

Ribbon mics are typically very low sensitivity, so you may be
noise-challenged on an acoustic guitar.....

geoff

On Tue, 2 Nov 2004 00:15:33 -0500, greggery peccary wrote
(in article ):

"Geoff Wood" -nospam wrote in message
...
Ribbon mics are typically very low sensitivity, so you may be
noise-challenged on an acoustic guitar.....

geoff



Ya, maybe i'm just so sick of digital recordings that I miss the noise...or
more likely it doesn't roll off on the high end and may not have sounded as
warm if we had recorded it digitally (cutoff at 20K).

Well a lot has to do with the mics, preamps and A/D conversion. If you use
the good stuff, you won't have the problem of not liking the way it sounds.

Regards,

Ty Ford





-- Ty Ford's equipment reviews, audio samples, rates and other audiocentric
stuff are at www.tyford.com

greggery peccary wrote:

"Geoff Wood" -nospam wrote in message
...
Ribbon mics are typically very low sensitivity, so you may be
noise-challenged on an acoustic guitar.....

geoff



Ya, maybe i'm just so sick of digital recordings that I miss the
noise...or more likely it doesn't roll off on the high end and may not
have sounded as warm if we had recorded it digitally (cutoff at 20K).


This is going to be fun to watch.

In article -nospam writes:

Ribbon mics are typically very low sensitivity, so you may be
noise-challenged on an acoustic guitar.....

Well, not really "very low" sensitivity, though most are a little
lower in output for the same SPL as a general purpose
diaphragm-and-coil dynamic.

Mic sensitivity is a funny thing. Nobody had any probmes with it when
mics were mics and preamps had enough gain so that the mics could be
used at the typical working distance. Then along came condenser mics
with much higher output (the transformer is to REDUCE the output
level) and people got used to it. In later years manufacturers of
condenser mics have dropped the output level so that it's just a
little hotter than a dynamic, but by then mic inputs had been scaled
back to maximum gain of about 60 - 65 dB so everything was sort of
back on an even keel.

Then ribbon mics started to get popular again, and brought the "low
sensitivity" issue into play. Today we have folks like Royer (and a
neat in-line 20 dB booster from Sanken) that add gain right at the mic
to bring the sensitivity in line with older condensers, making a
particularly "hot" condenser mic. And so the pendulum continues to
swing.

Oh, and then you have acoustic guitar players who strum like they're
trying to saw through the body - no problems with level there.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message

.. Today we have folks like Royer (and a
neat in-line 20 dB booster from Sanken) that add gain right at the mic
to bring the sensitivity in line with older condensers, making a
particularly "hot" condenser mic. And so the pendulum continues to
swing.

But these devices inherently boost the s/n level inherent in the original
transducer due to the miniscule signal. Granted neodyium magnets have
reduced this problem significantly.

a
Oh, and then you have acoustic guitar players who strum like they're
trying to saw through the body - no problems with level there.

Yeah - I was thinking more 'delicate' there...


geoff

On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 10:33:13 -0500, agent86
wrote:


Ya, maybe i'm just so sick of digital recordings that I miss the
noise...or more likely it doesn't roll off on the high end and may not
have sounded as warm if we had recorded it digitally (cutoff at 20K).


This is going to be fun to watch.


Actually not. We have heard this one played out many times before.
yawn.
Willie K. Yee, M.D. http://users.bestweb.net/~wkyee
Developer of Problem Knowledge Couplers for Psychiatry http://www.pkc.com
Webmaster and Guitarist for the Big Blue Big Band http://www.bigbluebigband.org

"greggery peccary" .@. wrote in message ...
"Geoff Wood" -nospam wrote in message
...
Ribbon mics are typically very low sensitivity, so you may be
noise-challenged on an acoustic guitar.....

geoff



Ya, maybe i'm just so sick of digital recordings that I miss the noise...or
more likely it doesn't roll off on the high end and may not have sounded as
warm if we had recorded it digitally (cutoff at 20K).

Ok, I'll bite. What exactly are you trying to say? It sounds like you
are saying that "noise is good because it reminds me of analog" but
that "digital is warmer" because it "rolls off at 20k". Is this what
you meant?