Tips, Techniques, Examples about my favorite musical instrument, the Twelve-String Guitar.

If you play guitar check out Playing Technique, or Strings / Setup. There are also some interesting posts about guitars at, you guessed it, Guitars.

If you want to spread your musical talents around, you will find some good info at Recording.

Marketing - meh - I'm probably the world's best bad example. Although you could find funny stuff there.

I've made some music videos through the years, and you can find them and other interesting music at Music I Like, Music I Play.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Is this a type of compression?

I've been listening a lot to Leo Kottke's early masterpiece album "6 and 12 String Guitar". The guitar sound is very detailed; it's just wonderful to listen to, and I find it especially fun to listen to with earphones. It sounds like the 12-string had one mic close to the fingerboard, another near the right hand, and a third up by the headstock.
A magnetic pickup seems fairly obvious during heavy bass passages. The sources are panned in various directions, not blended, so you can clearly hear the short, high tensioned strings on the headstock ringing between fingered notes and the thunderous bass runs. The guitar sounds huge.

One thing I noticed was the lack of sound hole boom. Maybe it was the guitar - I think Leo Kottke used a Gibson B45-12 around that time, and going by one I have, it could be a little shy in the 100 to 200 hertz range. But I think it is the magnetic pickup that might have the most to do with this lack of boom. Leo Kottke actually recommended blocking the soundhole during recording. Putting a huge Sunrise pickup in there would have the same effect.


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