I just use one large diaphragm condenser on my very cheap and crappy acoustic. The sounds I get are decent with a single AT4040, Rode NT1-A, or a cheap $60 Samson. I did try using 2 condenser together a few years ago but I don’t recall getting any improvement in the sound. There’s more flexibility in how you choose to mix the two mics, but for me, I don’t know if there’s any need for it at this time.
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The first acoustic sounds fairly decent. It can be EQ’d and altered to make it shine more. You can definitely work with that.
The second acoustic sounded really muffled to me. Not a very good sound but even that could be improved with some treatment. As long as the guitar doesn’t have tuning issues it can be used to make a decent acoustic track, although it is far from ideal.
If you want to get more lower end on the acoustic, just direct the mic at the sound hole and move withing a foot of the mic. You can even go less than 6 inches away if you’re not too heavy handed on the picking/ strumming.
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in addition to this, bass frequencies normally need to “Develop” before they hit the mic due to their larger wavelength. Sometimes room acoustics come into play. Proximity to the mic is good but proximity will also boost highs with the same intensity. It will definitely give a more full sound; however, if goal is to get a good well rounded bass sound, and you don’t have access to a well treated room, you can record in a treated “corner” section of the room. This has worked for me before I ended up having the entire room treated.
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Some good ideas here. I’m ashamed to say I still don’t own an SM '57, so I can’t try it. I suppose I’ll have to buy one someday… I’ve been trying to record a stereo acoustic sound, I’m not quite pleased with the result. Thinking of buying a stereo pair of condensers instead of a small and large diaphragm panned L+R. But maybe an SM’57 to complement my Rode M3 is and idea?
As to the ovation, I don’t own one, but I know some people can get a great sound out of them. Back in the late seventies it was Joan Armatrading on an Ovation who convinced me that you could play some pretty funky stuff on an acoustic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsvwspk4WkI.
I agree that the first recording is quite usable. Some compression (I also use M2V for this sort of stuff) will certainly help. Was listening to Joni Mitchel’s Big yellow taxi in the car this afternoon and was struck
by the huge amount of compression going on.
Maybe it was already mentioned, but in the future maybe rather than using 2 mics, you could try 1 mic and DI as a combo. You may end up with some decent lows from the DI that you can mix in. Just a thought
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In my experience this never gets you excellent results, it is better to do a proper recording with one good condenser placed properly in a decent room than any combination of mics (unless you need a stereo recording of course), especially a DI since no guitar pickup sounds as good as a good condenser. I think it is no coincidence that the vast majority of professional recording engineers favor external microphones over guitar pickups, too.
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I have no issue with the first guitar at all. Maybe a bit of eq to bring out some of the bass notes, but it sounds fine to me. The second one is very muffled and does not sound thin, but rather very veiled and unclear.
Try different mics and especially different positions. Then good old eq to bring out the characteristics that you want and remove those you don’t. And don’t forget that the eq settings you have during the intro may be different than those when the guitars are sitting alongside the rest of the instruments later in the song.
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