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Hi All,

Im new to all this so please forgive the ignorance. I have a couple of question which I'm sure have been answered a zillion times before but Ive done a couple of searches and nothing answers my specific questions.

My housemate has been gigging more and more recently and wants to record an album. Its all original inde / folk guitar + clean vocals.

After reading pages and pages of info i have bought a multi mix 16 and we took our first steps recording on Sunday.

We started with the elctro-acoustic guitar and vocals through a sm57 going straight into the mixer, recording through firewire into Audacity. The guitar sounded really twangy. You could hardly hear the top 3 (bass) strings. I played with the EQ which made some difference but not enough. Vocals were good but breathy.

We changed to Guitar > Amp with the sm57 placed about 10cm from the amp and about 5cm off centre. That kinda sorted the eq, but now we get lots of vibration like sounds. With the sm57 this far from the amp the gain has to be nearly 100% which is causing hiss and vocal bleed.

I made a popscreen (stretched tights) and placed it about 10cm away from the SM57 (my housemate was eating the mic in the first takes). That really improved the P, B, and T's but the vocals now hardly register on the board or in Audacity, and pushing the gain on the mixer past the 3/4 mark starts to cause an awful hiss.

So to recap, is there something I'm missing on electro acoustic recording (or is it just a bad guitar) and is there something wrong with my vocal recording technique? Id appreciate any help i can get! :)

I will try to post up some of the recording i got for critique later.

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anonymous Wed, 09/17/2008 - 06:20

BudgetPro wrote: We started with the elctro-acoustic guitar and vocals through a sm57 going straight into the mixer, recording through firewire into Audacity. The guitar sounded really twangy. You could hardly hear the top 3 (bass) strings.

Put on some headphones and move the microphone around until you find the sound you are after. To get more bass sound move toward the sound hole. To get a rounder sound move toward the 12th fret. For a hard attack, try near the bridge. Where the neck meets the body, and the 12th fret are the most common microphone locations.

BudgetPro wrote:
We changed to Guitar > Amp with the sm57 placed about 10cm from the amp and about 5cm off centre. That kinda sorted the eq, but now we get lots of vibration like sounds.

I have the element screen taped to the body of the microphone to keep mine from buzzing for this type of thing.

BudgetPro wrote:
I made a popscreen (stretched tights) and placed it about 10cm away from the SM57 (my housemate was eating the mic in the first takes). That really improved the P, B, and T's but the vocals now hardly register on the board or in Audacity, and pushing the gain on the mixer past the 3/4 mark starts to cause an awful hiss.

That's the way a dynamic microphone behaves. SM57's are made to be eaten. Roll the low's off on your mixer. (low cut button) That should help with the plosions and proximity effect. EQ more in your DAW if you want.

anonymous Wed, 09/17/2008 - 10:19

Hi GeckoMusic, thanks for the quick reply.

BudgetPro wrote:
We started with the elctro-acoustic guitar and vocals through a sm57 going straight into the mixer, recording through firewire into Audacity. The guitar sounded really twangy. You could hardly hear the top 3 (bass) strings.

Put on some headphones and move the microphone around until you find the sound you are after. To get more bass sound move toward the sound hole. To get a rounder sound move toward the 12th fret. For a hard attack, try near the bridge. Where the neck meets the body, and the 12th fret are the most common microphone locations.

His elctro acoustic has an integrated mic (which kept picking up vocals... :x ) would you sack that off and mic the soundbox (sm57 about 25 - 30 cm away from the sound hole?) instead?

anonymous Wed, 09/17/2008 - 10:42

BudgetPro wrote: His elctro acoustic has an integrated mic (which kept picking up vocals... :x ) would you sack that off and mic the soundbox (sm57 about 25 - 30 cm away from the sound hole?) instead?

I have never heard an acoustic electric pickup that I wanted to record. However they can be great for live performance. I would sack it and put a mic on it as you suggest. Start with 10cm away from where the neck meets to body, and go from there. If you have a small diaphragm condenser, try that first.

This should give you enough separation between the vocals and guitar to mix, but editing will cause echos or phase issues.