Acoustic guitar: will a pickup improve the recording?

Most pickups for acoustic guitar are challenged to provide a full rich and natural tone.

Perhaps the best and most expensive are the best.

When I absolutely have to use a pickup I use a simple Seymour Duncan sound hole mounted type that is much more like a electric guitars pickup than the other fancy technologies.

I find it sounds pretty natural... all things considered.

A microphone, carefully placed continues to be the preferred method for getting the sound you hear with your ears.

If there is no secondary desire to use the pickup on a stage for live performance than I would advise you to spend the budget on a much better microphone.

Acoustic guitar is probably the tone that requires the most carefully selected mic and preamp. You need gobs of dynamics and the ability to translate super fast transients gracefully but without slurring.

Is there a bona fide pro studio where you can book an hour?

If you experience the sound of a good mic and great preamp firsthand... this will all make sense and you can start making some long term plans for purchases that will really be helpful. 


Good luck!

best regards,
mike


really bad spelling today :-)

Acoustic Guitar pickups are for amplifying the guitar for live performance, not recording.

In addition to the suggestions above, I would add starting with picks and strings and playing technique. Different string types can sound brighter or darker; different pick gauges (if a pick is used) sound dramatically different on acoustic. They're also very cheap.

If you can describe exactly what you feel the problem is now, we can probably offer better help.

Ok, clear, thanks all! Won't buy a pickup, that's for sure. I'll see what I can do with mic placement and plugins to clean up the sound!

Gosh.  I've been using a combination of mics, pickups, and acoustic amps for years to get acoustic sounds.

I had no idea a pickup wouldn't help.

Hmm...guess I've been doing it wrong, then.

I've recorded my Yari Alvarez using various mics while also tracking the LR Baggs pickup I installed. Depending on the song, a blend of those 2 elements can get me pretty nice results. I've also recorded my acoustic by plugging it into my Epiphone Valve Jr and sticking an SM57 in front of it.

Alot of options to this stuff, and NO rules.

Randy

I saw him play that tune back in '82.

I still love that tune.

There are a new breed of DI preamps that actually take the DI sound and model it into the sound of an acoustic guitar being miked. This is where it could be at:

http://www.acguitar.com/a...t.aspx?articleid=25140

I have read a review of this in two mags now and in both cases they said it was pretty convincing. I see this could be a better alternative than a straight preamp. But they are not cheap of course. There is another system that is even more expensive that is also meant to be amazing. (I will have to track it down) Also the Roland V Guitar is not bad either at turning a strat sound into an acoustic guitar but of course this is quite expensive.

Something else to consider, and kinda off track here. ALWAYS record acoustic guitar with new strings. The best mics, preamps, room, etc won't help a nice guitar with old dead strings. It can even help a marginal guitar sound decent.

Randy

I recorded my acoustic for the first time a few songs back... I used a combo of pickup and mic to get the sound... but it still wasn't even close to what I wanted..... the guitar is the weak link in my case.

What Skull says is right about recording with a PU... sometimes it does sound exactly like what you want and need for the song.

Randy is also right on target with NEW STRINGS..... yeah... I heard that in some of the Nashville sessions, the strings were changed after 15 minutes of recording to keep that fresh, bright, acoustic sound that they love in Nashville. I also heard they used very heavy gauge strings... 15 minutes sounds excessive to me, but, they know what they want....nothing like a set of new strings to make you play better... or at least think you are.

I really like the idea of modeled acoustic sounds.... coming through the wire.... if the mic can't get it right, or the guitar just doesn't mic up properly fro a good sound..... technology to the rescue.

+1 on recording with a combination mic and pickup.   I guess it's all about personal preference.  I do a lot of acoustic recording with an LDC mic and pickup blend.  My pickup is a Fishman Rare Earth Humbucker.  When I mix, my mic recorded track is the main focus, but I like to blend the pickup track to enhance.

Agreed on strings! Even if I don't want a really bright acoustic sound on the track, I'd rather track it a little brighter and tame it with EQ as opposed to taking a dull acoustic and trying to get it to sound brighter.

But little things make a big difference on recording acoustic. Last night I was recording an acoustic track and couldn't get it sounding right - I changed to a different pick guage and that got me the tone I was looking for!

One thing to consider is to delay the pick-up sound by a half or whole millisecond to offset the distance to the mic if you're mixing them  ( time dependent on the distance of course ) but it can help to get rid of the slight phase sound, which we usually try to compensate for with Eq.

I'm a big rare earth fan.

Thanks for the update!