?This week one of my best friends picked up a brand new Taylor. The list price of the Taylor is just slightly above the budget for my girlfriend's next car. In other words, this is one of the high end, no compromise Taylor acoustic guitars. It just so happened that I was recording acoustic guitar tracks today for a solo artist I've been producing, Daniel Sexton.

We had borrowed a late 90s Martin D-28 acoustic guitar last week, but we were never really happy with it. No matter what I did, I always found the guitar was very boomy. It was hard to get any definition out of the guitar that would cut through a dense mix without using EQ or really crazy mic

placement (I certainly don't mind putting the mic in a ridiculous position if it gets the sound I'm looking for). It's not so much that the Martin D-28 acoustic sounds bad. It's more just an issue of character. For the type of sound we were looking for, the Martin wasn't giving me what I needed.

Now I could EQ the big Martin low end out of the tone. (By the way, my Soundelux U99 has a monstrous low end that pretty much becomes unusable anywhere near the sound hole when recording a boomy Martin D-28 acoustic guitar). If I have a choice, I NEVER use EQ. There is almost always a better way of getting the tone I am looking for than slapping on a parametric equalizer. You see, a parametric equalizer will boost certain frequencies, but it doesn't really change the character of the tone (if that makes any sense). For example, you can EQ a Gibson Les Paul all day long, but it will never really sound like a Fender Telecaster. So if I don't like the character the acoustic guitar I'm recording, and I have exhausted all possible micing positions, the last step is to simply switch acoustic guitars. (This concept applies to any instrument, really).

It was truly amazing when we put the Taylor in front of my Soundelux U99 (and later on two MXL V69 tube condensers microphones in stereo). The problems I had with the Martin were long forgotten. It was clear that the Taylor suited the tracks better than the Martin did. The Taylor had a definition that would also cut through the bitty electric guitars that were to be recorded later on. I want to clarify that the Taylor does not sound necessarily better than the Martin. That would be a ridiculous statement. It just sounded better for this application. Tomorrow I may be recording and the Martin may be perfect for the job. For that matter, maybe a $100 acoustic guitar will be perfect for the job!

I noticed that Daniel (the guy actually playing the guitar) was digging in a little much during the choruses. There is nothing wrong with a little digging in, but often times I find that acoustic guitars and condenser microphones seam to combine together and "bottom out" if the acoustic guitar is strummed with too much intensity. The golden rule I've heard from respected producers when looking for a specific acoustic guitar sound is to play the guitar 1/10 as hard as you think you should. In this case, having Daniel back off a little bit made an enormous difference in tone. You could clearly see the extra peaks on my Cubase SX3 recording software when he was hitting the guitar hard. When I asked him to back off a little bit, not only could you hear how the guitar sat in the mix much better and see that its peaks were greatly reduced in Cubase SX3, but you could hear the low end wasn't bottoming out either. (BTW, this is just another case where you can't properly engineer without a little producing. If you are not in a position to ask your guitar players to play a little quieter, you are not in a position to engineer to your fullest abilities either).