Tuesday, October 17, 2006 ... 10:30 AM
Neko Case DVD review bonus rant
On her new Live From Austin TX DVD, Neko plugs in her four-string tenor acoustic guitar, rather than mic'ing it. It's a tiny, tinny sound, and centered in the mix, it saps depth from the arrangements. I imagine that, mic'd, this Gibson guitar has a scrappy Delta edge to it. Come on in my kitchen, that sort of thing. Plugged in, it sounds like a comb flicked with an acrylic nail. Electricity shrinky-dinks it.
I cannot be convinced that electro-acoustic guitars sound anything like musical. If your act doesn't require splits backflips handstands, you have no good excuse not to mic your acoustic. I can rant on this for days, how a piezo pickup makes a Guild sound like an aquarium filter, but here I'll just beg all you troubadours touring with your vintage Hummingbirds -- ditch the plugs. An SM57 microphone costs eighty-nine bucks at Guitar Center. It fits in a tube sock, and you can kick it three blocks down the sidewalk without giving it a headache. Point it at the 12th fret. It sounds good.
Check out my new Neko review at HickoryWind.org!
Brendan
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