Acoustic Guitar Mic'ing

In most cases, cardioids are the best choice for mic’ing acoustic guitar. While you can certainly attain good results with a large diaphragm mic, medium diaphragms are often preferred in order reduce proximity effect. Our medium-diaphragm ST33 and ST44 are all excellent choices for this application. In fact, the top-address ST44 is the type of mic that is considered by many engineers to be the finest mic to record acoustic guitar in the world.

Techniques

Mic’ing the bridge yields a very sweet sound. Angle the mic either away from the sound hole or tilted up from underneath. The difficulty with this position is that the performer’s hand can obstruct the pickup pattern, yielding a fluctuation in sound. Working with the performer to find a way to capture the bridge sound unobstructed can be well worth the effort.

The most popular position is where the neck joins with the body. This placement yields a nice balance of warm body and bright neck, including natural fret and finger noises. Deploying a matched pair with one mic at the joint and the other at the bridge can result in one of the most satisfying acoustic guitar sounds. Panning the results hard left and right can yield a dramatic stereo sound.

Close-mic’ing techniques are often a bit too “in your face” for solo classical guitar. In that event, try placing the mic three to four feet in front of the performer and level with the sound hole in order to capture more room sound. To create more of a concert ambience, deploy a matched pair left and right at even greater distances. You can also attain the best of both worlds by using multiple mics to combine the aforementioned close-mic’ing techniques with this distance-mic’ing technique.