I found the Shures and the T12 to be the most neutral sounding. The others tended to have woody midrange tones.

bouldersound, post: 439896, member: 38959 wrote: I found the Shures and the T12 to be the most neutral sounding. The others tended to have woody midrange tones.

Unless the guitar itself have woody tones.. that's what is tricky about mic shootouts ;)

Too me they all sound good but different, I would have to choose in relation to the song and the instrument.

I'm pretty familiar with SM81s so I can use that as my reference for comparison purposes. But, as you say, it's about what sounds good in the mix.

I agree that the SM81 was the most neutral of all the mics. The KSM still had too much low end bloom and I'm not sure whether it was this guitar or placement. I would have felt I had to rotate that mic a bit on both finger-style and pick. The 47 sounded the best in finger style while the T12 had more excitement to the pick use. And as always, the SM57 was totally usable in either situation.

Now I know this wasn't the point and they all sound like nice tools, BUT if you are just starting out....and I say this to all the new readers and the researchers who get brought here through their searches, an SM57 Shure will never RUIN a recording. And the better the rest of the gear around it the better it will perform. Is it the best mic in the demonstration? No.........but its not far off

I agree Dave, I put the SM57 in there because so many studios has it and it's a good comparaison point.
Having a SM57 can get us a long way and it's a good one to learn about mic placement.

One thing to be carefull about (for those readers) I used a focusrite ISA preamp that has 80db of clean gain. With the SM57, it was set pretty high to have enough signal to be close to the other mics. I must say, the 57 wouldn't have sound as good/clean without the ISA... ;)