Does anybody ever use their Acoustic pickup for recording?

Recording, Mixing and Producing
#21

I have. And it didn’t work well. At all. I was a bit disappointed.

#22

Not sure what is under the hood. Say you are running this thing into an IR to get it sounding mic’d (my best guess) As far as making it workable for a bunch of pickups, could you not load a bunch of IR’s and make them selectable? Have your parameter controls but have like 3 or 4 buttons that change the IR ?

Again, not sure if you are doing Impulse Response to acheive this?

#23

I use a tape plug to smooth out DI acoustic… Usually Kramer master tape. Also use MaxxVolume or MV2. It works OK enough for what I do.
Now that I think about it, I haven’t recorded an acoustic with a mic since I left tape and went digital.
Haven’t been 100% satisfied with any acoustic tone yet. But it’s fun to try to make it work…
I don’t have any mic’d recordings to compare. But I’ll see if I have any raw DI tracks that are worthwhile…

#24

Will watch this one with interest. Have often tried to go with acoustic pick ups, but inevitably, I always turn back to open mic-ing.
Good luck. The stuff you posted DOES sound impressive.

#25

I throw something up when I get home tonight @bozmillar

1 Like
#26

Have you seen UAD’s “wood works” plugin? I watched the demo vid, and it reminds of what you are trying to achieve.

#27

I have. I want to take that idea and make it better. The good news for me is that I don’t really see UAD as competition because:

A) They are tied to the UAD dongle

B) People who like UAD will like UAD better, regardless.

for everyone else, there aren’t a ton of good options out there. I did fine a company that makes impulse responses for DI guitars, and they do a pretty good job of it, but supplying it just as wav files leaves out a lot of features that make it easy to use.

#28

I’d be very interested in a plug like this. The direct out from my Ovation doesn’t sound that bad in a mix, it cuts thru nicely. I always mix that direct signal with a mic take, using more or less of the direct as needed (this is mostly for a strumming acoustic as part of a bigger mix, not the acoustic by itself).

The new version of Sonar Platinum has a plug that’s supposed to turn a direct electric guitar signal into an acoustic – you can change body size and some other variables. I haven’t played around with it enough to see if it’s worthless or worthwhile…

#29

I added an “Attempt 2” (It’s actually more like attempt 392). I left it in mono because it’s too easy to think something sounds better just because it’s stereo. It’s not quite exactly like the original mic’d tone, but it’s closer, and leaves a bit more of the sizzle in there.

#30

I’m having a bit of a rough time with the low end. It seems like no matter what I try, it’s either boomy or thin, and it’s tough to find the balance between those.

#31

Listening from a phone (so…) The sizzle is there but seems too high-mid heavy. Overall missing the low_mids that would come with a mic’d git.

#32

Is there anyway to insert your “tilt” eq module in there, pre or post special sauce?

#33

OK BOZ here is 4 tracks one ovation with di and mic and a martin di and mic no processing just dry.

OVATION DI

OVATION MIC

MARTIN DI

MARTIN MIC

1 Like
#34

As you probably know I do mostly live recordings. In that setting, DI is the norm. I would guess less than 10% of the artists mic an acoustic guitar. The pickup is usually the lowest common denominator but a great DI can help to bring out the sound so you can work with it. I have a half dozen DIs that I have used over the years but have settled on Groove Tubes Bricks for bass and the new Neve RNDIs for guitar. Both sound really nice and give me a pretty solid start to getting the sound I want. that said, many times (like festivals) I don’t have control over the equipment. Then you just have to really work the sound to get it to sound natural.