I tried recording an acoustic guitar yesterday in my studio and it sounds
good except for what I would call an overly "plucky" attack on the notes.

The guitar has a pickup in it and I tried by plugging it straight into the
board and via a preamp. I also compressed it a bit.

It still sound "plucky".

It is a high end guitar with a special pickup that sounds great when the guy
plays live.

Any ideas outside of micing it?

-s

Self wrote:

I tried recording an acoustic guitar yesterday in my studio and it sounds
good except for what I would call an overly "plucky" attack on the notes.

The guitar has a pickup in it and I tried by plugging it straight into the
board and via a preamp. I also compressed it a bit.

It still sound "plucky".

What does that mean?

It is a high end guitar with a special pickup that sounds great when the guy
plays live.

Any ideas outside of micing it?

Mic it.

--
ha

Nothing sounds like a microphone. As for getting a natural sound from a
pickup, forget it.

"Self" wrote in message
...
I tried recording an acoustic guitar yesterday in my studio and it sounds
good except for what I would call an overly "plucky" attack on the notes.

The guitar has a pickup in it and I tried by plugging it straight into the
board and via a preamp. I also compressed it a bit.

It still sound "plucky".

It is a high end guitar with a special pickup that sounds great when the
guy plays live.

Any ideas outside of micing it?

-s

Self wrote:
I tried recording an acoustic guitar yesterday in my studio and it sounds
good except for what I would call an overly "plucky" attack on the notes.

The guitar has a pickup in it and I tried by plugging it straight into the
board and via a preamp. I also compressed it a bit.

It still sound "plucky".

Pickups sound that way. They don't get the body of the instrument.

It is a high end guitar with a special pickup that sounds great when the guy
plays live.

I bet it doesn't if you compare it with a mike live.

Any ideas outside of micing it?

None whatsoever. You have to mike it. There is no substitute. Pickups are
totally useless for recording unless you are looking for a deliberately
artificial sound.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Self wrote:
I tried recording an acoustic guitar yesterday in my studio and it sounds
good except for what I would call an overly "plucky" attack on the notes.

The guitar has a pickup in it and I tried by plugging it straight into the
board and via a preamp. I also compressed it a bit.

It still sound "plucky".

It is a high end guitar with a special pickup that sounds great when the guy
plays live.

Any ideas outside of micing it?

-s

Okay, so you tried micing and you tried the pick-up. It might help if
you described the guitar (acoustic - steel string or nylon?) and style
of playing (bluegrass, classical, jazz?). What kind of pick-up? What
mics did you try and where did you place them? If you supply more info
you might get a better response.

you could try that compressor at it's fastest attack time and at a release
slow enough to avoid pumping.....but I suspect even that will just get you a
mangled, plucky sound ! A different sort of loading at the input end (of the
order of several Megohms) might mitigate the 'pluck' to some degree, as most
line inputs only supply 10-100kohm...which is not enough. There was a thread
on this subject here about a week ago. Combine the miked sound with a (mids
rolled off) pickup sound and see if that gets you something of the best of
both worlds. Start with miking at the 12th fret, 15 inches away and see what
that gives you first.....?
Ray

"will" wrote in message
ups.com...
Self wrote:
I tried recording an acoustic guitar yesterday in my studio and it sounds
good except for what I would call an overly "plucky" attack on the notes.

The guitar has a pickup in it and I tried by plugging it straight into
the
board and via a preamp. I also compressed it a bit.

It still sound "plucky".

It is a high end guitar with a special pickup that sounds great when the
guy
plays live.

Any ideas outside of micing it?

-s

Okay, so you tried micing and you tried the pick-up. It might help if
you described the guitar (acoustic - steel string or nylon?) and style
of playing (bluegrass, classical, jazz?). What kind of pick-up? What
mics did you try and where did you place them? If you supply more info
you might get a better response.

Ray Thomas wrote:

you could try that compressor at it's fastest attack time and at a release
slow enough to avoid pumping.....but I suspect even that will just get you a
mangled, plucky sound !

All that will do is emphasize the "pluck". And he's trying to get the
pluck outta there...

--
ha

Self wrote:
I tried recording an acoustic guitar yesterday in my studio and it sounds
good except for what I would call an overly "plucky" attack on the notes.

The guitar has a pickup in it and I tried by plugging it straight into the
board and via a preamp. I also compressed it a bit.

It still sound "plucky".

It is a high end guitar with a special pickup that sounds great when the guy
plays live.

Any ideas outside of micing it?

-s

Best advice is to drop the gain on the eq (if you are using parametric,
use a relatively tight Q), and sweep across the frequency probably
starting around 200Hz, and going up over the mid range until you find
something that suits and gets rid of as much of the unwanted "pluck"
sound as possible. You'll probably find it at around 1-2KHz (bassists
usually have to slap if they want a fast attack sound), which is
probably also why live it is less noticeable (a room full of bodies
soak up mid-high frequency sounds quite well). That's the only advice I
have other than mic'ing which you don't want to do.

Hope it helps.

Some Good Insights:

It is a small body Gibson Acoustic called an LC3 Caldera. It sounds very
good live. There is a special pickup in it that was only put in two of them
as a trial. Then they never really made the guitar in production. It
belongs to a "household name artist".

The micing answer is the answer. After reading the answers here I tried a
few things and they were very helpful. My experince is more with classical
recording and I am new to this type of recording. Most of these cats play
way too loud.

Hopefully I will be able to post the finished product somewhere on the web
for you all to hear.

B/r,

-s







"Self" wrote in message
...
I tried recording an acoustic guitar yesterday in my studio and it sounds
good except for what I would call an overly "plucky" attack on the notes.

The guitar has a pickup in it and I tried by plugging it straight into the
board and via a preamp. I also compressed it a bit.

It still sound "plucky".

It is a high end guitar with a special pickup that sounds great when the
guy plays live.

Any ideas outside of micing it?

-s

Hopefully I will be able to post the finished product somewhere on the web
for you all to hear.

Will look out for it....:-) Good music always appreciated.

You know, you can always mike the guitar in stereo and run a DI also. You
keep the mikes in stereo and use the DI (with some EQ) just to fill in the
center.

"Leo" wrote in message
ups.com...


Hopefully I will be able to post the finished product somewhere on the
web
for you all to hear.

Will look out for it....:-) Good music always appreciated.

In article ,
"Romeo Rondeau" wrote:

You know, you can always mike the guitar in stereo and run a DI also. You
keep the mikes in stereo and use the DI (with some EQ) just to fill in the
center.

That's my proven approach to recording stand-up double bass, but rather
than say "fill in the center," I think of the DI side as providing a
foundation of sound, then mixing in the mic for tone color. It's a very
tricky balancing act, as I found that too much of the DI signal makes
the instrument sound too much like an electric.

"Leo" wrote in message
ups.com...


Hopefully I will be able to post the finished product somewhere on the
web
for you all to hear.

That would be great! I'd add that two mics might be a good approach to
recording the guitar. In that case, I'd aim one at an angle, from the
headstock toward the fretboard, just before the sound hole, and the
other one from the back end toward the area on the body just after
the sound hole. This should capture a nice, wide range of tones, with
more highs coming from one mic and more lows coming from the other.

Have fun!
Eric

Eric P. wrote:
That would be great! I'd add that two mics might be a good approach to
recording the guitar. In that case, I'd aim one at an angle, from the
headstock toward the fretboard, just before the sound hole, and the
other one from the back end toward the area on the body just after
the sound hole. This should capture a nice, wide range of tones, with
more highs coming from one mic and more lows coming from the other.

That's my typical approach...a small condenser at the 12th fret (I have
it quite snug to minimize my ****ty room), pointed downwards and
slightly towards the body (but not at the soundhole) and a second
dynamic (SM-57) on the bridge (near the high E, pointed upwards, but
again, not at the soundhole).

I find this allow me to balance the tone (the 57 is way darker and
muddier with little or no pick noise and the condenser is quite bright
with a little more string and pick noise) to get a nice even and
natural sound regardless of the attack. If I want a processed sound,
I'll DI my Korg AX10A to supplement these two tracks (so I'd have 3
guitar tracks)...the nice thing about the DI is that I don't have to
worry about the vocal bleeding the way I have to with the mics...way
easier to do vocal edits.

Cheers, CS