In my Home Recording Studio, I use a Neumann 49 and a Baby Blue Bottle.
The reason I purchased the Neuman 49 was I learned from reviews that it is a great guitar instrument microphone and does well with vocals. As cash is always an issue, I wanted a versatile microphone that could do many things. I would like to someday purchase an AKG 414, but have not been able to feel comfortable doing that just yet. Before I purchased the Neumann, I was using a pencil mic and the Baby Blue for recording my acoustic guitar (Taylor 814). The upgrade in sound quality (tonal) has been significant.
I place the Neumann 49 to the right and just below the hole of the main body of my Taylor 814. Not too close or over the hole as one might get booming…
I place the Baby Blue over the 12th fret off my guitar. Not too close (about 4-6 inches). The toughest part about this is I find myself moving a bit while recording, but for the most part this seems to work.
Logic 8 — start a new project
Before recording, you will need to set-up Logic 8. Once the program is open, go to new. You will have multiple options before you, including the opportunity to set-up all your channels yourself. I prefer to use the Rock option and then add or delete the channels as needed, which saves me some time. It’s worth exploring your options here to see what works best for you.
Logic 8 Settings for acoustic guitar
My settings in Logic 8: To go to your channel Strips, click on the Mixer at the bottom left of the screen. Pick your channel and then add your presets. I like to use the presets of Mic on Fret and Stereo Double dry in mono mode for each channel. You’ll have to play with this to see what works best for you. Please Note: I could record using the Stereo setting at the bottom of the channel strip. I like to use mono and place the audio of each mic on separate channels. This gives me more control of the sound and allows me to blend the two together. It also lets me edit the EQ on each channel separately which I find helpful.
I use DR stands with arms and the standard shock mounts to minimize vibrations.
One issue I have encountered is my microphones pick-up my breathing on occasion if I’m not careful. I have not been able to get my noise gate’s to cut this sound out. I also sometimes get unwanted percussive sounds from my hand tapping the guitar lightly as I play. I have ended up, fixing this manually by cutting out the bad and inserting the good. Just goes to show you that I’m songwriter not an engineer. The good news is that it solves the problem, but it does take some work.
I’m sure there are folks out there that know how to fix the issue. Love to hear from them.
For the most part, except for the issues mentioned above, I get clean crisp tonal quality from this microphone set-up. What’s really nice is that one mic picks up one set of frequencies and the other another set. When I combine them, the sound is really rich and full. My friends that have visited my small recording studio are surprised at the quality of sound I’m getting in the home audio recording environment. I’m just grateful that’s it’s possible to record at home at all. Not too many years ago, it was way out of reach for most of us.
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