Advice needed - recording acoustic guitar with limited equipment!

["Evil" Aidy]

Well, I'm not sure if limited is quite the right word here but here's the story.

I'm recording a thrash instrumental track at the moment and it has a small section of acoustic guitar in it. I'm not sure how to approach recording the acoustic guitars though. How would you guys approach it with the equipment below?

Ideally, the kind of thing I'm after would be something similar sounding to the intro to Metallica's To Live is to Die (just an example!). My equipment is as follows:

Crafter GAE-8 Electro Acoustic
SM57
KAM KDK5 Drum Mic Kit
Presonus Firepod

Should I be going for the overhead mics? DI into the Firepod? Or just the SM57 placed in front of the guitar?

Help!

 

[Babar]

Grab a couple of nice condensors from the drum mic kit, preferably the overheads, though the snare mic and tom mics should be fine as well.

Place one in front of the sound hole about 10cm away, and one in front of the 12th fret about the same distance away. Mess with some eq-ing and possibly some chorus effects and reverb once it's in your daw. Voila

 

[Forceps]

You'd better aim one mike at the spot between the soundhole and the bridge.
When you aim directly at the soundhole, you get a very boomy sound.
The other one at the 12th fret position is the right spot for the second mike.
I'd go for the 2 overhead mikes and pan them hard L - R to get a big and natural sound.

 

["Evil" Aidy]

Hey thanks for the tips guys!

I'll give it a shot.

 

[egan.]

I often put a SDC where the neck meets the body angled towards the body at about 6-10". I find this gets a good balance of the guitar sound (provided the guitarist can sit still).

 

[crazykarl]

Try recording direct too, I've gotten some awesome results with that. An X/Y pair of small diaphragm condensers is great too, point one toward the neck/body joint and the other toward the mid-space between the soundhole and bridge. Play around, see what sounds best. Sometimes direct works really really well and is a hell of a lot easier.

 

[ahjteam]

I did it like this and it sounded pretty decent:

 

["Evil" Aidy]

Many thanks again dudes for the advice, your help is really appreciated.

Once my recording is finished I'll let you know how I got on.

 

[Forceps]

Your're welcome, I'm curious to hear the result!

I just recorded some acoustics too, used 2 mics and I'm pretty happy with the sound already I aimed one of the mics at the 12th fret, just like the picture. That's the spot where you can capture the entire sound of the guitar, much better than aiming at the soundhole or somewhere near it.