Mic for Acoustic guitar and Grand Piano?

[B. Carron]

I am looking into purchasing a new mic that I will use for home studio recording of an acousitic guitar and I will also use it for live gig recordings of a grand piano. The kind of music I will be recording is mainly jazz. Any sudgestions? I can only spend about $500-$800. I do not have an expensive Mic pre, just the new Mackie 1402 and my 2 mic preamps on my 808. Later I am going to get the DigiMax. I don't have an Avalon or anything like that, maybe someday.

I am considering the Neumann • TLM 103. I also see that BLUE has just released their new Baby Bottle. The Dragonfly also looks interseting. Any thoughts on this?

I also need to look into a mic for recording a upright bass on gigs as well. Any thoughts on this?

[michaelhoddy]

Depends on the sound you're going for. The TLM-103 is a bit dull to my ears, probably in an effort to get some of that "vintage" sound going, but that's just my opinion. It may be just the sound you're going for.

One mic smack in the middle of that price range that I have yet to be disappointed with is the Audio-Technica 4050. It also has the advantage of being a multi-pattern mic. It's a fairly neutral-sounding mic, but I have yet to find an acoustic instrument that I can't get a good, if not excellent sound out of using one (or two). I find myself using these in a lot of the applications that I used to use AKG 414's in a few years back. They sound great on piano, great on upright acoustic bass, and good on acoustic guitars (although I usually prefer a smaller diaphragm to capture the transients a bit better).

You could also pick up a PAIR of Audio-Technica 4033's for the same money. A little more hyped-sounding, but still hard to go completely wrong with, and one of the best mic bargains for under $300 that I've found. You could then mic the piano (or guitars) in stereo.

For initial mic purchases, I personally think that it's better to get mics that are fairly neutral and sound very good on a variety of sources, rather than a highly colored mic which may sound awesome in a particular application, but whose versatility is limited by the coloration.

This sounds like an AT commercial and I don't mean it that way, but check 'em out.

[B. Carron]

Thanks for your feedback. I think for the acoustic guitar sound I really like the type of sound that Pat Metheny gets with his acoustics. The high frequencies are very airy and mellow. I like a lot of body. In most situations I will try to get away from the folk/strumm sound. I do have 2 Oktava MC012 mics as well. When I what to get more of that bright sound I can place one at about the 12th fret to see if the helps.

[DAS]

If you're interested in a variety of opinions check out this link

http://www.sweetwater.com/insync/summits/pagelink.tpl?page=guitar-miking

Most of this is from a couple of years ago so keep that in mind as you read it.