I have been doing more experimenting with my home recording setup, working on ironing out the little details and striving to get a better sound. My main setup has been:
Pair of ADK A6 mics
Presonus Studio Mobile Interface
iMac and Logic Pro
All affordable gear but I think it gives good bang for the buck. My main goal is to get a good a sound as I can with the gear i can afford. I would like to do basic recording and editing at home, then ship it off to someone else for mixing and mastering. Below is the configuration I have settled on for the present, the ADK mics in a spaced pair, about 19 inches from the guitar. Sorry about the faint car noise at the end.
I first heard the ADK A6 mics at Dreamguitars.com Al Petteway used them to record all the guitar samples, and I thought they sounded good. Corresponding with him I found out they just plugged them straight into a digital recorder in a quiet room. Sometime later Dreamguitars happened to be selling their pair of A6’s, so I picked them up. They seem well built, are quiet, and sensitive enough for fingerstyle guitar. They do seem to get the best sound farther out from the source.
In my limited experience one of the biggest problems recording at home are room acoustics and room noise. Computer fans, traffic outside, neighbors, spouses, and the furnace/fridge/other appliances all get picked up by the mics. I have avoided some outside noise by recording late at night, and thankfully I am far enough away from any major appliances. But I live on a bus line and some sound does get in through the windows. In addition the mics pick up a bit of fan and hard drive noise from my iMac. The ideal solution would be to put the computer on the other side of the wall but since everything is build into the monitor that is not really an option. My other thought is to get a used Mac mini for recording or in a future recording space be able to get far enough away from the iMac.
Mic Configurations
I have experimented with a variety of mic placements but keep coming back to spaced pair. One mic is pointed at the 12th fret and the other at the lower bout, making sure to avoid the sound hole. The mics seem to pick up less room noise in this configuration and its easier for me to get a good balanced stereo image. I wish I could mic closer to avoid more room noise, but ADK seem to have a fairly strong proximity effect.
If you are thinking about getting these mics hopefully this post gave you a little more information. There are a ton of choices in this price range, and I think the ADK’s are worth checking out, especially if you can pick up a pair used.