Recording Your Resonator

[jazzbass12]

Starting a thread here to share techniques recording your resonator. I’m not looking for advice as every situation warrants something different. Just hoping to get some discsussion going..
I recently used a medium condenser , 12” back pointing at cone with decent results.

roswellproaudio.com/products/mini-k47

Another technique is 2 pencil condensers 6-8” back. One pointed where neck joins body and the other pointing at biscuit on cone.

www.rode.com/microphones/m3

I still struggled with getting it right though. I don’t have the best room either. My mics although decent are budget.

What are others doing for recording?
Rich O

[richclough]

Hi,

I've been doing some recordings with an engineer in a local small studio recently. We have been using a single small diaphragm condenser pointing at the magnetic pickup of my tricone - about 20-30 cm away. We've only used one guitar mic as have been recording vocals at the same time with a separate Perlman large diaphragm valve mic.

The guitar mic is a Josephson C42. I have used/owned a pair of these previously and can strongly recommend them. I don't know what mic-pre is being used in the studio, but I've had good results myself with a DAV BG1.

Having said that I gave up home recording a few years ago and sold most of my kit - too hard to engineer as well as write and perform, never got anything finished.

However, whilst I was home recording I did do a few things to minimise the effect of the room i.e. duvets/foam on walls, lots of bookshelves to disperse, using one of those 'shields' that sit behind the mic to minimise off axis reflection. One of the problems is that acoustic guitars need a bit of room sound to come alive. It'll always be a compromise one way or another I suppose.

Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Rich

[richclough]

What I would add is that there is no point spending money on mics etc until the room has been sorted out one way or another.
R.

[Deleted]

Use a pick-up and a mic simultaneously. Record both and mix to taste.
TT

[Michael Messer]

I have been making music as musician and producer in recording studios for almost 40 years. I have recorded in some of the best studios in the world, sometimes getting an amazing sound and sometimes getting an average okay sound. I have also recorded in small cheap studios and had the same results, sometimes it is great and sometimes not. So for me, actually it is all about the skill and the ears of the person recording and mixing the music. I have recorded in the most basic of setups and got a sound like it was recorded in a big expensive studio, and I have recorded in the big expensive studio and the track sounds like it was done in a basement with a cassette recorder. It is all in the ears, not the machinery.

So many of the greatest recordings were done in small cheap poorly equipped studios. Equally...so many of the greatest recordings were done in the best studios in the world.

Shine On
Michael

[bluesdude]

I was told by someone in the know that Johnny Winter recorded his solo National tracks with a radio shack clip-on mini mic!





Kenny,,,,,,,,,

[richclough]

Oct 17, 2019 15:51:55 GMT Michael Messer said:

So for me, actually it is all about the skill and the ears of the person recording and mixing the music.

Which is why I really enjoy working with an engineer with ears who not only understands the best way to use his kit and room, but who I trust to tell me when I can do better...

Cheers,
Rich

[Deleted]

Oct 17, 2019 16:24:32 GMT bluesdude said:

I was told by someone in the know that Johnny Winter recorded his solo National tracks with a radio shack clip-on mini mic!
Kenny,,,,,,,,,

That's what I use. For recording, it sounds clearer than any of my other mics. In conjunction with a sixtus.
I've recorded in a clothing cupboard, and it killed the sound completely. Soundproofing doesn't improve the sound, it stops the neighbours complaining. I now do it in my office - basically timber / plasterboard.
TT

[Deleted]

I would believe it’s true but Need to know more details about the radio shack mike... many different versions in their catalogs tru the years...crystal or dynamic...impedance...directionality

[twang1]

I have recorded resophonic guitars many times in different places. In my opinion, as others have stated, the room is important: it must have a good live sound in itself. With a good room I'm halfway there. Then I usually tend to record in the same way that I play, with a good mic in front of the cone (sometimes with an additional mic aiming at the 12th fret).
I also find important the direction of the mic aiming at the cone: pointing sligthly at your feet and you have more bass, and pointing slightly up and you have a bit more treble.
Regarding EQ: with my tricone I like to push a bit the mids, +3 db at around 1,6 K. I don't like compression. I want a natural sound straight from the beginning, so they don't have to mess around with it later. Later on I might add some reverb, but that depends on the song or the producers etc.

In case you want some different sounds or some electric or weird sounds, you can throw out of the window everything I suggested and...experiment!
;-) Frank

[Deleted]

Exactly.I was once working for a guy who decided to dismantle his 'home' studio (we just managed to squeeze it into a seven ton truck) cart the lot to a chalet in Switzerland--a really big one mind you--and record his next album half way up the Alps. He was noted for being very hands on with his recordings and spent half a day walking into every room and checking the acoustics by clapping. Eventually he decided the bathroom was the place for the drums,the fact that Simon Phillips was the drummer--not noted for his minimal drum kits--notwithstanding. Anyway,to cut a long story short the resultant drum sound was pretty amazing to say the least.

[creolian]

Im a professional "know it all" sound guy and everything above is good...

I have found that resos have two distinct soundfields close to the face. Ive used two high quality condensers (akg 414bls) a number of dynamic mics ( shure 57,58 ) small condensers like JW ( sanken cos 11b ). One recording method Ive used w good results in MS stereo... many prosumer recorders now have ms matrixing. Its primarily used in film sound recording, but sounds great on guitars.

I Even tried a line gradient shotgun mic ( sennheiser 816)... not bad outdoors, but indoors a line gradient mic usually sounds hollow...bad.

you can never have enough mics ( or expensive enough mics ). I kid but the recording chain is only as strong as its weakest link...
That said : Currently, Im using the built in x-y pair on the Zoom recorder. A bit of the "general" setting of compression. Very happy and the quality is more than my purposes need... it has a 10-24 thread hole and I have made an adapter to put it on a mic stand boom. Works like a champ, no cables etc...

Last century, I did a few guest lectures at a local university and I used physical analogy to explain mic technique... mics are essentially ears, but be aware that some microphones have eyes in the back of their heads. Knowing your mics and how they hear is important... i.e. Where the back of a mic is pointed is sometimes more critical than where the front is pointed.. .knowing where those null spots are can make a big difference in both sound quality and gain before feedback in live performance. After having done this for a while, I realize there are many different paths to the same destination but I shudder when I see a mic positioned so that its picking up gobs of unwanted background noise from the rear. ( improper mic technique and the resulting 8 channels of snare drum leaking into an already overly loud sound system is one reason I listen to many live performances outside the front door of the club ).

P.s. The reasons why a small clip on works well for Jw is because it has both a wide enough frequency response and is small. The smaller a mics diaphragm the better its time phase alignment. Theoretically the perfect mic would have a diaphragm as small as a single point in space... Obviously the advantage of perfect phase alignment is negated by the impossibility of a micro diapragm having a wide enough frequency reponse. Im always blown away by the sound of tiny condenser radio mics... mine are pricey but Ive used them on about every typical musical instrument excluding percussion with excellent results----. Sanken Cos 11b. Audio Technica has some very affordable clip ons... these are generally omnis and have a nice natural sound ( they are usually optimized for voice frequencies )

Im going to shutup and go finish this book now... enjoy !

Jeff

( the only thing I actually know is that I will never know it all... this recording thing has been lifelong and theres plenty that Ive not figured out )