Mic Or DI Acoustic?

Squidgy Black

I'm doing a bit of an acoustic project recording at the moment, I've an mbox mini 2 and a Studio Projects condensor mic.

Would I be better just mic'ing the guitar, or buying a cheap DI and going straight into the interface? Or would it be better to just skip the DI and go straight in?

Zombienosh

do both and blend them? :P
mbox mini has two inputs right?

PMI

depends on guitar and room I would say, if its a 2k taylor in grouse lodge then mic it, if its a 100 quid crafter in a bedroom I would say DI

madtheory

That makes no sense. A poor guitar DI'd will always sound worse than the same guitar miked.

DI is a pet hate of mine. Too many gigs where it's done badly (i.e. not processed to make up for lack of resonance). If you want it to sound like a guitar, use a mic. Listen to the guitar with your ears (seriously). Fix the room acoustics if necessary. Put on a good set of cans, and move the mic around til it sounds like what you heard with your ears. You will probably need to notch out a low mid resonance around 200Hz ish. That's normal.

The problem with the usual undersaddle piezo pickup is you don't get any body resonance. This completely changes the dynamics and is completely different to what the performer intended, unless they're listening to the DI feed.

However, it is a cool sound in certain situations. Probably not in your situation though. Don't bother using both. In twenty five years I've never had a situation where that was genuinely appropriate. Currently I really like an XY pair of of Audix SDCs.

Squidgy Black

More than likely I'll try and get a lend of a decent enough acoustic for the recordings, so it'll have a decent enough fishman system in it.

At the moment it's looking like a small bedroom job, but I could possibly do it in a large room downstairs but it'd be open to quite a bit of outside noise etc.

I think I'll try mic it first and then if it sounds absolutely horrific I'll get a lend of a DI or purchase one