08/02/2021
Dealing with less than ideal acoustic guitars?
Too boomy? Don’t cut through enough? Too muddy?
Here’s how you can avoid some of these issues and help it hold it’s place in a mix while competing with other instruments.
The first thing I did was take out pretty much all of the low end, removing any occasional hint of boom through the guitarist naturally moving.
Next up was, taming any muddiness that may have come through, and because there’s bass, kick and the meat of the snare all around 150 - 200hz and below, I really didn’t need it occupying much of that range either, especially seeing as it was sat alongside an electric guitar for the warmth...
The next thing to help it cut through a bit more was boosting some of the high mids around 5k for some presence and to get the sound of the strings come through a little more.
Cutting the lows naturally gives the top end more emphasis but in context with everything else, I just needed a bit more from it.
The LA2A is there for its character and to help smooth things out a little – only a few dB with of reduction, nothing major.
The multiband compressor is just in place to keep any slightly pokey areas around the 5 – 6k region from where it was previously boosted if it got a little toooo ‘stringy’ at all.
The result was an acoustic guitar that had a clearer and slightly more ‘percussive’ sound to it from the strings which fit nicely and appropriately in place alongside the rest of the arrangement without interfering with everything else.
