I’m taking some time off on most of my other projects (except for work… duh) to learn the acoustic guitar. Been toying around with the guitar for the longest time but had only gotten as far as playing single note on the C and G scales, not hard to imagine that never took off. Using a guitar named Debra WK420. Really cheap guitar with a “few” problems but it does justice for a beginner to practice on. Had the strings replaced and will do the same with saddle and nut shortly. Three weeks of learning currently, mostly just following youtubers, but quite inspiring.

After learning the basic anatomy of the guitar and recording, I considered getting a pickup for the guitar. Most options aren’t cheap. So before jumping into buying a pickup that could cost more than a studio microphone. I decided to test out recording with my current set of microphone. Surprisingly, my $20 microphone (dynamic) works fairly well, though the noise/ambient sounds is quite significant. On top of that, I have to be strumming like mad to while have the microphone half a foot away from the guitar. So not very promising solution. Then I took a look at my 5 dollar clip-on microphone, the Zalman ZM-MIC 1 that I use for gaming (so I don’t have to see a microphone in front me while I play FPS) and thought due to the low cost, this would probably sound worse. Using the same distance set up as the previous dynamic microphone, it sounded okay. I was even more surprised to find less ambiance/noise on this sucker. Unfortunately, it also picks up less of the bass. But remembering that this was the clip on microphone, the one that clips on to your shirt (like my tie :))… see:

Yes, I clipped it to the side of the sound hole on the guitar. I was expecting fuzzy sounds due to the high bass and the direction of the microphone not being able to pick up the highs. Anticipating the boosts in sound, I lowered the overall volume. And the result? I have to say, excellent for 5 dollar equipment. Suffice to note, it does not have the natural acoustics heard from the physical world, however, it does do quite well to act as a microphone pickup. While there’s a surge of the low frequencies, it’s still quite audible as a whole. The minimal amount of ambient noise shouldn’t be overlooked.

Have a listen: http://media.kaiyoti.com/misc/guitartest.mp3

The audio demo had no “noise cancellation” or equalization done on it, it’s raw sound encoded in mp3. It could use a little HP filter to bring out the highs a bit more. The downside is that it picks up all sounds from the body of the guitar since the mic is clipped to the surface. So my clothes rubbing against the guitar is also amplified… oh well, guess I’ll just have to record songs with my shirt off, like a real rock star.

For my next trick, I’ll be experimenting multiple source recordings with my gaming and onboard sound cards using more of these cheap microphones to create a sound with more volume.

I’m looking into getting a condenser microphone called Samson Go Mic which goes for around 50 bucks. It’s a fairly portable microphone that plugs as usb device. Combining it with my ghetto microphone pickup, it should balance out the sounds as well as allowing me to do vocals, so I can be a rock star!

[Update]
Just tested out duo microphone recording using two sound cards (one onboard and another pci card)

http://media.kaiyoti.com/misc/guitartest_duo_mic.mp3

Sounding pretty good so far.

[Update 2]
So after hearing the clips in my studio headsets, I’ve learned that there’s a slight ambient noise… which I think is fine as long as I fade out the silent portions. If you know me, I’m probably going to be adding plenty of other sounds to my tracks anyway.