Guitar field-tests: guitar microphone optimization
Larry Villella ADK Microphone Founder
Find Your Special Guitar Soul-Mate –Dial in Your Tone-Color!
You spend a lot of time trying to find guitars that fit your musical needs. It makes sense the each one of your guitars deserves a microphone that fits the personality of you and the personality your musical instrument. In Nashville it’s not unusual to put a variety of guitar mics on a single acoustic guitar to find or blend the perfect tracks.
Picture of FRITZ and ADK Custom / 3 Zigma Mics
in Michael Wagoner’s Studio
That said - Sometimes it’s far better to find the Perfect Mic for Your Guitar and track Mono!
Listen to the Track Here:
Acoustic Guitar
ADK Microphones is the culmination of two parallel fifty-year collections of microphones and guitars. Our founder started playing guitar at a young age and added to his own father’s collection, creating a wide variety of guitars, from arch-top to 12-string, from nylon strings to dreadnaughts. Since all of these various frets have a different tone-profiles, it made sense to create guitar-specific microphones to best achieve optimal recording results for various type of instruments, rejecting the one-size-fits-all concept.
We immediately made friends with our kindred-spirits in Nashville, starting with Mick Conley (Marty Stuart, Kathy Mattea). Mick is both a musician and engineer and gave us great insights into the needs of Nashville’s premier guitarists. When it came time to record Marty Stuart’s Million-Dollar pre-war Martin D-45, Mick called on ADK to track this magnificent instrument, which had previously belonged to Hank Williams, Sr and Johnny Cash. They selected a 3Zigma C-Lol-12 TL to record larger-body rosewood guitars because Dreadnaught Martin tend toward being “Boomy” or Bass-Heavy. Having a Brilliant Mic like a C-12 Reference balances the tone. Having a HPF as the C-Lol-12 FX does, can also help tame bass-proximity boost. In contrast, Marty and Mick chose the C-Lol-67 TL for smaller-body mahogany fingerstyle guitars. We make it easy to pair Mics & Sources by offering a Palette of Sonic Paintbrushes. Fit the tool to the task by ‘tone-matching’.
Notice the unique downward-facing mic technique used on Marty in this picture. The old adage is to throw the book away, put the headphones on to find the sweet-spot – however counter-intuitive a placement.
Marty Stuart with ADK 3 Zigma on his favorite Mandolin.
Also used on his legendary Pre-War D-45 Martin Guitar.