Recording guitars, electric or acoustic, is awesome with two dissimilar mics! Of course, the soundstage placement won't be centered, but that's usually exactly what I want when I record guitars. Different mics will accentuate different strings, picking techniques, buzzes and rattles, etc, giving the guitar a lot of motion when you have the two tracks panned wide.

-aaron

I'm currently recording drums with dissimilar mics, great left and right imaging, but there is bascially no center, which is durm overhead is kind of a cool effect, cause it leaves more room in the middle for the snare, and the vocals later on. I'm a fan of it, just whatever sounds good is what you should go for.

Ben

IMO there's no downside at all. I do it all the time (when I'm not tracking in mono) and enjoy having the distinctly different colors to blend with.

Not only can you have fun in using two different mics but maybe one mic has a tube driven line amp in the path and the other is totally clean with a solid state (or even digital) path.

Sometimes a matched pair is just what you need, sometimes it's not. It totally depends on what sounds best for that instrument or application at that time.

i have a mic that gives a nice warm body lowend, and i have a mic that give crystal clear airy highs. but what if i want full body lows and crystal clear highs? i use bolth mics. if its accoustic folk guitar then i hard pan left and right, if there a litle out of phase it sumtimes sounds fantasticly wide givin the vocals a lot of room. if its somthing i want to place in the mix then i take alot more care to make sure they are not out of phase.

if you find something new that sounds good just remember that, then on your next project you can think "i know exactly what i what to hear, and this is how i get to do it"

Another way you could utilize those 2 mics in a more traditional way would be as a Mid-Side pair. Your KM184 would be your Mid and the figure 8 pattern on your AKG for the Sides.

Thanks for the great replies. That's good encouragement to experiment further. I'm hoping to loosen my mindset that I have to have two of the same mics to do stereo recording.