one mic - acoustic guitar & vocal

[swarfrat]

I'm singing / playing acoustic guitar at (a very small) church.  No clue whats in their mic locker, I'm guessing an SM57. I have at AT2020 on hand, so I was recording myself with it in practice, planning to have it on hand Sunday. The AT2020 can be a smidge brittle but I've never heard it described as harsh or sibilant - but thats the problem I'm having. Vocal is extremely sibilant, and the guitar is pretty bright too. Mostly from mic position - trying to eq it out just makes things muddy.

The guitar sound would benefit from a bit more guitar body in the mic - it's a baritone jumbo - it shouldn't be thin. It might get a little bump by tuning up into the resonance range, but I don't want to tune up past C# because my voice benefits from the  range it's in. Getting the guitar sound I want leaves less vocal in the mix.

Anyone deal with this before? How do you get a full guitar sound with a hotter vocal that isn't sibilant?

 

[Cagey]

use two mics, or one mic for vocals and put a pickup in the guitar. Getting rid of sibilance without having a detrimental effect on other frequencies means an EQ with finer slices (more bands) so you can focus on the narrow range those artifacts occur. Not gonna get there with simple bass/mid/treble controls unless you can tolerate a lotta compromise. Also, might try a windscreen on the mic. Tames down vocals, particularly percussives and fricatives, without attenuating frequency response much.

 

[swarfrat]

Internet was down for a couple days...

I was thinking - oh but I can't trust their mic selection.. but they will have decent vocal mics - so I can use the AT2020 on guitar and their vocal mic. I was able to get a better mix and vocal just by backing off a bit. I hadn't thought about my distance being kinda close.

 

[Cagey]

Well, the vocal mic is going to be off-axis from the guitar and 2 feet away from it, so you probably don't have to worry about that one too much. Guitar mic might be a little more difficult.