micing blues guitar

ogy

hey lads, going to be recording a blues guitarist/singer soon and was looking for some suggestions/input.

he sings and plays slide acoustic on his lap mostly
i have 2 x 414s and 2 x 451s available (sm57 and sm58 if needed)

i was thinking maybe
- 414 for vocals
- 414 for body of acoustc (pointed down i presume as the guitar will be resonating upwards in this style i guess?)
- 451 for the neck (again angled downwards)
- possibly the other 451 about 3 feet away for a bit of ambience

other options maybe using the 414s as a stereo pair about 3 feet in front and the 451s as overheads a few feet above? its a reasonably nice sounding room
could then use the 58 as a spot vocal mic and 57 on the neck incase more definition need? is this far to complicated a setup for a solo musician?

what says ye?

studiorat

A 414 on the vocal and a 414 on the guitar. Spend a bit of time placing the guitar mic. I wouldn't bother with stereo guitar, it'll only sound strange with the vocal. And that's it, personally I wouldn't even go for the ambient pair.. The neck mic is only going to pick up noise of the slide on the neck and make the vocal ambient.

ogy

cheers rat, that sounds straightforward and makes sense, might through up the pair of 451s as ambient mics just out of interest and not use them if they don't add anything

PaulBrewer

Might be of interest ?

http://www.recordproduction.com/robert-carranza-recording-tips.html

ogy

very cool paul, i've heard of people doing such things before, butch vig talking about doing it with the hum from amplifiers, flipping the phase till the hum dissapears then flipping back to have perfectly aligned mics, crafty.

anyone have any practical experience of it?

PaulBrewer

I tried it with a singer once ....

i57dwun4yb1pt8

ha ha hah

nice one