I think my acoustic guitar sounds best Mic'd. I mean, tip 'o the hat to all the piezo bridge transducers and sound hole mounted mag pickups, but I play nylon, so one of those options isnt viable. It's easier for the sound guy to just plug in an instrument, when changing players / guitars...
I'd like to mount the mic - in an easily removable fashion - directly on the guitar body. This will allow freedom of movement while maintaining a consistent distance to the capsule. That's problematic, as the guitar has sound vibration happening everywhere on its body, including the neck block / tail block. Put that with there's limited space for it to physically go, due to right hand playing style.
The microphone, of course, is as adept at picking up vibration as it is sound, so what you get for your "sound" is the sum / difference between the acoustic sound and mechanically conducted body vibrations. A hard mount to the side of the guitar would be worst case.
The microphone itself cannot be gigantic - no one's going to put an SM57 on standard gooseneck plumbing with a flange screwed to the top or side of their guitar. Though Dan Hicks did exactly that and went on TV with it.
I've been using a dynamic mic from a Shure headset. It's small and light, picks up sound from both sides like a ribbon and its plumbing diameter is small; almost looks the part. The trouble lies mostly in mounting it to the guitar somehow. It must be easily removable and quickly set up upon pulling the guitar from its case.
This is what works best so far. Basically a cylinder of soft foam Velcro mounted to the side of the guitar, in a spot where my hand wont hit it while grabbin' those strings. (Neodymium magnets would be a "stage 2" development - a pair glued to the inside of the guitar, a pair on whatever it is getting attached) The foam - apparently - works as both an isolator and damper within which the microphone floats. As opposed to a hard mount, where the mic and its plumbing stem would go tong-tong-tong upon plucking the capsule end. Another nice arbitrary resonance to add / subtract from the guitar's sound.
I'm tempted to get one of those camera microphone "shock-mounts" with the o-ring bands, but I'm afraid it'll be an instant fail endeavor. One can actually buy the foam cylinders off epay, in 65 and 100 mm diameter, for more than what the aluminum camera shock mount costs! Whatever material / scheme it is, it has to hold the mic in place during reasonable standing position stage movement and isolate, damp, isolate. This prototype performs adequately, just looks like crap. Hey, I dont have a CNC waterjet or laser, so machining precise features into light density open cell foam - I'm lucky to make a somewhat square to the part hole in it at all.
Any other material suitable? The ubiquitous Sorbothane, but I've never seen it as a foam. I suppose it'd be possible to layup a few discs of the stuff into a cylindrical shape - if I can get discs in the "shore" that'd work for this application. I wouldnt trust metal springs, as there's no damping at all in such an arrangement. A "rollup" of Sorbo sheet with thin foam filling, like a pastry?
I'd like to mount the mic - in an easily removable fashion - directly on the guitar body. This will allow freedom of movement while maintaining a consistent distance to the capsule. That's problematic, as the guitar has sound vibration happening everywhere on its body, including the neck block / tail block. Put that with there's limited space for it to physically go, due to right hand playing style.
The microphone, of course, is as adept at picking up vibration as it is sound, so what you get for your "sound" is the sum / difference between the acoustic sound and mechanically conducted body vibrations. A hard mount to the side of the guitar would be worst case.
The microphone itself cannot be gigantic - no one's going to put an SM57 on standard gooseneck plumbing with a flange screwed to the top or side of their guitar. Though Dan Hicks did exactly that and went on TV with it.
I've been using a dynamic mic from a Shure headset. It's small and light, picks up sound from both sides like a ribbon and its plumbing diameter is small; almost looks the part. The trouble lies mostly in mounting it to the guitar somehow. It must be easily removable and quickly set up upon pulling the guitar from its case.
This is what works best so far. Basically a cylinder of soft foam Velcro mounted to the side of the guitar, in a spot where my hand wont hit it while grabbin' those strings. (Neodymium magnets would be a "stage 2" development - a pair glued to the inside of the guitar, a pair on whatever it is getting attached) The foam - apparently - works as both an isolator and damper within which the microphone floats. As opposed to a hard mount, where the mic and its plumbing stem would go tong-tong-tong upon plucking the capsule end. Another nice arbitrary resonance to add / subtract from the guitar's sound.
I'm tempted to get one of those camera microphone "shock-mounts" with the o-ring bands, but I'm afraid it'll be an instant fail endeavor. One can actually buy the foam cylinders off epay, in 65 and 100 mm diameter, for more than what the aluminum camera shock mount costs! Whatever material / scheme it is, it has to hold the mic in place during reasonable standing position stage movement and isolate, damp, isolate. This prototype performs adequately, just looks like crap. Hey, I dont have a CNC waterjet or laser, so machining precise features into light density open cell foam - I'm lucky to make a somewhat square to the part hole in it at all.
Any other material suitable? The ubiquitous Sorbothane, but I've never seen it as a foam. I suppose it'd be possible to layup a few discs of the stuff into a cylindrical shape - if I can get discs in the "shore" that'd work for this application. I wouldnt trust metal springs, as there's no damping at all in such an arrangement. A "rollup" of Sorbo sheet with thin foam filling, like a pastry?
Does it have to be DIY?
The DPA 4099 has a fairly decent guitar mount in its range of accessories.
It works well given a couple of factors - the mic is (I suspect) much lighter that what you have pictured, so it's easier to achieve decent isolation and the mic is rather high end, and has pretty darn good isolation built in already.
The only downside? $$$$.
The DPA 4099 has a fairly decent guitar mount in its range of accessories.
It works well given a couple of factors - the mic is (I suspect) much lighter that what you have pictured, so it's easier to achieve decent isolation and the mic is rather high end, and has pretty darn good isolation built in already.
The only downside? $$$$.
Thanks! Yeah, DIY is kinda the idea for my playing level. Perhaps if I was Tommy Emmanuel, I could afford something like that. But I'm just a hack and Friday open mics give me something to do, a goal to prep for during the week. I could probably afford their guitar clip-on holder.
After playing some last night through my new mixer, I have to say the setup shown above is actually sounding PDG. Picked up a some Rare Earth magnets and a tube cutter at Harbor Freight to which the sales lady asked "what's your project?". So I told her and I think it's the first time she's heard that!
I need to shorten the microphone's stem plumbing and hopefully these magnets will allow a click in place and hold, through the guitar's side wall thickness; if these dont work I can get better magnets on line I'm sure to attempt hitting that design target.
The fellow whose camera "shock mount" item I was watching on epay made me an offer, so I took it. Perhaps that'll work as well in terms of vibration isolation; I'll pay $8 shipped to experiment and find out. I'm sure I could stuff the aluminum cage with some other material if the o-ring bands dont do a damn and it could be the diameter is just too small to get the cushioning needed out of any material.
When I get things sorted, I'll commit the guitar to a second hole for the wire to get inside instead of going over the top. Even that needs some vibration transmissibility as what clued me into something's not quite right was the sound changed significantly just touching the lead wire insulation with my finger.
I also recently purchased a XLR wireless pair. Those designs are all over the spot, I got the 600 MHz ones after reading the 5 GHz ones knock out the places WiFi when in use. What a dream - wireless guitar mounted microphone. That maybe a stretch too far and I'll probably use it for my headset vocal mic, that uses a similar element to the one shown above. One less cable, you know. When I practice, there's 3 cables; mic, guitar and headphone to step on and tangle around one another..
So I made some practical improvements, the mic now plugs into the guitar body with a 1/8" mono plug, versus a wire going over the top. I also tried a different foam plug, different "shore", smaller diameter which unfortunately was the wrong direction to go. Audible resonances started bleeding through again...
Clearly the "suspension" is the determining factor in this working out. It's a crap shoot buying foam plugs from epay, given neither myself nor the seller has any idea what the shore of their item actually is. Using a "soft" but random piece I pulled from my packing materials bin, albeit pointing me in the direction of success, doesnt bode well for anyone trying to reproduce the idea as successfully.
It appears the resonance of the mic held within the foam plug is under 10 Hz. I suppose a test for that, plus those other frequencies bleeding through could be arranged, as a way to qualify a particular foam piece, or other suspension mechanism, using an audio exciter to drive at the point where it attaches to the guitar with it attached to some sort of test stand. Now there's a run-on sentence!
I've seen other commercial attempts, including a mic at the end of a metal gooseneck that extends off the tail block as part of the endpin 1/4 jack, all of it inside the guitar. Lost as to how that could possibly work very well.
Clearly the "suspension" is the determining factor in this working out. It's a crap shoot buying foam plugs from epay, given neither myself nor the seller has any idea what the shore of their item actually is. Using a "soft" but random piece I pulled from my packing materials bin, albeit pointing me in the direction of success, doesnt bode well for anyone trying to reproduce the idea as successfully.
It appears the resonance of the mic held within the foam plug is under 10 Hz. I suppose a test for that, plus those other frequencies bleeding through could be arranged, as a way to qualify a particular foam piece, or other suspension mechanism, using an audio exciter to drive at the point where it attaches to the guitar with it attached to some sort of test stand. Now there's a run-on sentence!
I've seen other commercial attempts, including a mic at the end of a metal gooseneck that extends off the tail block as part of the endpin 1/4 jack, all of it inside the guitar. Lost as to how that could possibly work very well.
You can use a piezo no problem, some don't even require drilling a hole under the saddle and are very easy to install / remove as required:
https://www.knapickups.com/en/guitar/uke/ng-1-pickup-kna/