I'm limited at the moment to my acoustic with a semi-decentish fishman preamp. No decent mic, no decent space to record. Was wondering if anyone has had any success with this type of recording, obviously not going for beautiful acoustic in beautiful room into beautiful mic, but something workable? Go-To software? Suggestions?

 

What are we talking about here?

A bridge piezo pickup, soundhole pickup connected to a built in OEM Fishman 9V battery preamp with some EQ?

It will never sound like a guitar in a room, but a bit more detail goes a long way to heading in direction of a mildly acceptable sound.

 

Try Waves CLA-Guitars.

 

It's just a piezo bridge pickup, Fishman MX-T, in a Martin SC13-e

 

Nembrini acoustic voice guitar preamp

 

Last edited: May 9, 2022

Ok, thank you for that information.

The issue with peizo's for me is that they are generally a little bassier, muddier and have a higher frequency extention than a room microphone that can take advantage of the a guitar body's filtering characteristics, body bump and hf attenuation.

This isn't a failure of the pickup, for the most part they are very accurate at reproducing the sound at the bridge, a little too accurate for human tastes though. Without the guitar's body filtering the pickup sends the sound the wound strings accurate without sympathetic cancellations that happen in the bracing and on the soundboad so it's boomy. The Body bump which is that blending of the lower registers and harmonic resonance that we feel as a deepening and rumble is also missing at the bridge. Lastly HF attenuation that happens as the soundboard and the sides absorb and soften the sound of the higher strings also never happens and HF extension on Peizos gives them higher freq. extension, longer ring and decay times which can sound harsh.

For correcting peizo pickups, I find that what helps the most is some a transient reduction of about 1.5dB to 3dB of first 12-20ms to tame those sharp attacks that piezos have and an EQ to try to recreate some of the body bump, resonance and HF attenuation that a bridge mounted pickup is going to be missing.Set the EQ on the pre-amp flat to begin with. You can alter to taste later, but best reduce variables as you focus on your base sound first.



I've done this with EQ in parallel and in series depending on the sound I was looking for with OK results. I've also had decent success with envelope controlled filters instead of EQ on the LP and HP side allowing just a few 10-40ms of the top and low end into the channel before cutting them back to the nominal points in the picture.

It's not going to sound like a properly placed room microphone because transient processors aren't going to grab the attacks like a piece of wood and resonance harmonics are going to be missing, but at least it will be a bit more tolerable. 80/20 strings also seems to a little clearer for peizo pickups when recording, even if you find them a bit too bright and jangly when playing them in the room they translate better as filter processors are much better at filtering things than creating or boosting them.

Add some very very light reverb on a send to wash it into place route it all to a bus and very very lightly compress the composite signal to taste.


You can ameliorate all it with the addition of pedals designed to do this as well XVive Mike and TC Bodyrez work well for me certain settings and conditions. They aren't expensive and they don't sound bad.


Hope that helps a little.

 

Last edited: May 10, 2022

Thanks for the heads up on this one, tried it out seems promising

 

Wow, thank you, thats quite a bit of indepth info to work with, much appreciated!