As an aside one of the only things- well, THE only thing I use SmartEQ for is acoustic guitar. It seems to nail that kind of clanky, harsh stuff pretty easily. It won't give you one button perfect guitar but after it does it's thing a little simple eq usually gets it there.

 

Sounds like you have a very common problem with B string buzz/sitar and a little bit of player forcefulness.

Check the string to make sure you can still fit a sheet of paper under the first fret when pressing down on the the third fret. If it looks good at the nut check your frets if those look good check your bridge/pins for break over.

You can clean this up with Pro-Q as well. 8830 or so and some harmonics thereof.

TBH it really isn't that bad and it adds a nice folky charm. Guitars aren't keyboards.

To each his own though.

GL

 

Thanks for the reply. I think I have a pretty good grasp on soothe but will explore a little more. I can get rid of the rattle but at the expense of the acoustic sounding 'dull' so I will have a look at what you've mentioned here. Thanks again

 

Cool I will take a look at this.

 

Thanks this is very helpful

 

Definitely gonna roll off some of that 1.5-3 boominess.

 

It's a tricky instrument to fit into a mix because there are a lot of variables like type of guitar, the room, type of mic and position, etc., so my advice would be to experiment and try everything! I high cut to get the acoustic guitar out of the way of the vocals, but I did chose the correct guitar and strings (for me) to begin with. I also low cut on the mic if I am using a bass guitar, etc. Just remember every song and recording is different, so it depends on the rest of the mix.

PS who is playing the guitar?

 

Last edited: Jul 15, 2023

It's a friend of mine.

 

Maybe record it again and try to fix the problem during the recording stage?

 

Might have to try and make that happen

 

I usually practice acoustic guitar it front of a mic and listen on headphones. It really helps with my playing technique, as the instrument is very dynamic with lots of tone variation.

 

If I can arrange a re-recording session I'll definitely check the guitar first and ask him to hold back a bit while strumming.

 

BTW what type of microphone are you using? I'm using an SM81 which has a flat response, but other microphones may have a bump in the frequency response.

 

Even after the EQing, which did help and might seerve your purposes, the problem is the in the strumming and no plugin is gonna fix it. In particular, he's hitting the 2 beat too hard. Any guitar is gonna sound harsh when that is done. He should play the part as soft as possible, repeatedly, and to a click since the timing is off. Also the palm of his hand can lightly dampen the strings. Worth the effort, but it will not happen overnight to learn how to control his axe.

Unfortunately, anyone who plays that badly is unlikely to hear what's wrong and even more unwilling to do the woodshedding needed. Usually they view themselves as precious talents beyond criticism and unlikely to improve.

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2023

I never realised I had any bad habits until I started to mic up my practice sessions, and I was shocked at how bad my acoustic guitar playing really was! I started improving almost immediately once I got into the habit of doing this simple step. The acoustic guitar is an unwieldly instrument to tame from a recording point of view, so you have to hear the sound from an engineers perspective.

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2023

One of best showbiz quotes is from an actor who asked John Houston why he never had any acting directions or notes. Paraphrasing, I found 90% of directing is casting. But sometimes you don't have a choice. Ted Templeton when recording the Doobie Brothers had to steer away as diplomatically as possible from Jeff Baxter's unusable artsy guitar parts until his ass got shipped out. Or for another example, why do you think Sting won't work with Stewart Copeland? He didn't know, unlike Charlie Watts or Al Jackson Jr, that he was a backing player who virtually nobody showed up at the shows to see. Also hard to play with a drummer that has no swing

 

Last edited: Jul 18, 2023