Mixing acoustic guitars... need some help!!!!!!!

[Heabow]

Hi there

This thread is a little bit off-board since its about acoustic funkish music... but I think some of you can really help me.

So I gotta mix some acoustic guitars these next days and the tracks doesn't sound that good. The guy recorded his parts at home with cheap gears and I don't know how the fuck I can get at least a decent sound...

I tried to apply waves' mpx kramer tape sim, ssl 4000 channel... but not convincing... I must say that i'm not familiar with acoustic stuff, i used to work on metal stuff only!

The 2 guitars were tracked with an beyerdynamic's opus 53 through presonus eureka and a sm57 through digi002:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36870048/Acoustic Guitar/GLeft1.wav
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36870048/Acoustic Guitar/GLeft2.wav
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36870048/Acoustic Guitar/GRight1.wav
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36870048/Acoustic Guitar/GRight2.wav


oh also an important point: there will be guitars + vox only in the final mix.
Any suggestions/tips/advices are fucking welcome!!!!

 

[setyouranchor]

"you can polish a piece of shit"

I know it's not your fault as you didn't track it but one of the first things people seem to forget as engineers is capture it at the source. Don't "fix it in the mix".

I can't help at the moment as I'm on my phone but I'll try give you a hand later

 

[StefTD]

I think for accoustic guitars, you don't need the "sterilness" that many modern metal sounds need.
try to get the vibe correct, that's more important, I recorded 2 accoustic songs, both recorded with
really shitty gear, but almost everybody I showed it thought it was at least decent.

I like to use a very subtle reverb, a bit compression and something for tube saturation.
I also use the same reverb again on the mix buss and put another saturation plugin there, just
to make everything sit together well.

And about the gear again, the stuff I recorded was with the 30€ interface, with a cheap condenser
mic, a 40€ preamp and a 30 year old guitar with 10 year old strings that is half broken

 

[Heabow]

Thanks to you both!
I really hope you and/or other guys will provide some cool advices on these particular tracks...

And yeah i def agree with the "get the sound at the source" proverb. its so true but when you're only mixing the shit its too late.....

 

[waltz mastering]

The guitars don't sound bad..just a little eq to clean them up a bit should do the trick.

 

[Heabow]

well, i'm not good for acoustic guitar, i've no experience so maybe my judgement is too harsh but i don't how to get a good sound... It sounds poor and 'boxy'. Which frequencies would you boost/shut?

 

[BrettT]

I think that these sound pretty good, honestly. These are the processed tracks, right?

 

[Erik Monsonis]

Dude, those guitars sound really usable... Just compress them slightly to get more punch from the strums and eq them a bit, to make them sound warmer, then pan them LR and use a bit of delay or reverb in the guitar buss to make them glue and open up.

 

[Heabow]

oh man... I feel like i've shitty ears!
The point is I think they are clean but really cold and I tried different processing but without a good result. I also tried blending them and it seems to sound better when 57 is not too far in the mix. I think 57's brings a natural 'air' and smoothes the Opus 53's.

But I need help in EQing. Do I have to fix track by track (57 and 53), then apply a compression + reverb on the guitar bus? Or just process the bus only?
If you guys wanna share some MP3 and personal tips I could compare.

 

[Heabow]

Anybody else?

 

[RiF]

They sound very good and needed very little processing to my ears.
Here's a quick mix that I did using Waves SSL plugins only:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2134101/sneapforum/heabow%20-%20Acoustic%20Guitars%20%28RiF%2C%202011-09-02%29.mp3

And here's a screenshot showing the tracks and the plugin settings that I used (there's nothing on the mix bus):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2134101/sneapforum/heabow-Acoustic%20Guitars-Plugins.jpg

As you can see, I did not even touch the faders of the individual guitar tracks. They fell into place very easily. All the processing took place on the bus where all guitars were sent to.

I used the SSL bus compressor, because I find it the most natural sounding for guitars (and I guess you have it). Longest attack (30ms) to preserve the transients and a bit slower release (300ms) to smooth out the compression. Just 2-4 dBs of GR to even out the performace.

EQing-wise, I added some air using the G-channels HF band @ 10K (the G-channel's main difference to the E-channel is the Q of the HF band, which I find to be smoother sounding, because it has more of a bell character than the shelf-character of the E-Channel).
Then at around 4.5K, there's some presence of the guitar that can bring them to the front of a mix or push them further back.
At around 800 Hz, I found some honkyness that I dipped away with the LMF band.
The HPF and LPF just cleaned up the lows and smoothed out the very highs.

No reverb here, because there's already a lot of room ambience on the tracks. Not the greatest room but not a bad room for sure. Nothing to complain about.

I don't know nothing about the mix where these guitars should be fitted into though...

PS: Taking out a dB or 2 more of that 800 Hz and maybe even using a broader Q wouldn't hurt.