EQ'ing accoustic guitar pickup

Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2004 12:08 pm

I've noticed that removing some freq's around 500hz seems to help remove some of the unnatural punchiness of accoustic guitar pickups - but i was hoping some of you have more experience in Eq'ing them to get them sounding more natural. I know that every guitar is going to be different - but there sohuld be some sweet spots for Eq'ing some of you have encountered by removing or boosting frequencies.

Any ideas? As always - thanks for reading.

-Scott

Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2004 1:16 am

The main beef I have with piezo recording rather than condensers is the fact that the pick sound and the string sounds aren't very well defined from each other.

Via a condenser, you can really hear the picking and the actual guitar sound as two distinct entities - the picking as a high-frequencied tick that can help fill out the treble ranges.

Never found any EQ settings that helped produce that effect from a piezo.

Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2004 8:10 am

Thanks falkon - I used two condensers with the recording but they picked up too much of the vocals and it washes out the vocals when i include them in the mix. I was thinking about EQing the condensors to have them output only the pick and strumming sounds - and using the actual pickup track to fill in the rest. any experience in EQing to bring out only the pick or strumming sounds? i'm guessing they'd be pretty high freqs.

Scott

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 3:19 pm

Try pulling out a few db at between 800 to 900Hz on the direct signal. It takes a lot of the boxiness away.

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 3:41 pm

Quote:

Originally posted by Scott Fouts:
...- I used two condensers with the recording but they picked up too much of the vocals ...
Scott

Scott,

One method that I have yet to try but have read about is to record the guitar and vocal with figure 8 mics, putting the nulls in the appropriate places.

Bill

This topic sponsored by: