[LAU] best cheap mic(s) for acoustic / vocal recording?

[Robin Gareus]

Arnold Krille wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 11. April 2007 schrieb Robin Gareus:
>> If your guitar has a built-in pick up, record it as well. adding *a
>> little* of those other mics will greatly improve the ambience of many
>> home- recordings!
> 
> I tried that on the first track of guitar we recorded. The line-signal is very 
> good for stage-use but in the studio (ie. my living room) compared to mic 
> signals from the tube-mic or one of my condensors its just noisy crap...

wow you are fast!  or were you referring to past recordings?

> My next step was to use the condensor at the hole in the corpse with 30-40cm 
> distance and the tube-mic at the neck.
> But after some more track we went for just the tube-mic positioned at 30-40cm 
> distance from the point where the corpse goes into the neck and aimed a bit 
> at the hole. Gives a wonderful sound with concert acoustics and western 
> acoustics (ovation and others)...
>

right. 90% of a recording is a good mic setup! - 9% for good musicians &
engineering.  1% lol.

Thumb rules:
 * half a meter away
 * aim  between "the hole" and "the last fret".
 * moving towards the bridge -> a more brilliant sound.

But instead of using come cheap room-effects or Flangers:  add "a
little" of the other mics - maybe even phase-invert (like the mixed
pickup settings on a Strat.) - i'm not into Ovations or Western-guitar
but into Keziah Jones or Ani DiFranco sound...

A SM58 is great for adding a high-freq "hackbrett" taint.. or a more
volume in the 2nd Verse... - and come on: recording a 2nd opinion Mic
does not hurt: disk-space is so cheap :)

I usually don't EQ the "tube"-mic! but filter the other mics.

I use compressors them *before* digitizing; but that's just because my
pre-amp & analog equipment is better than the cheap DAC. - for a
high-end studio equipment pre-recording compression is not an issue.


#robin