[Tonear]

Notice: New vocal soundbites added in later post, including AT 4047!

I'm looking for an excellent vocal mic that will do some time recording other instruments as well, especially acoustic guitar.
Today I came home with a Neumann TLM 49, and a Shure KSM44. I'll be testing them on a singer tomorrow, but in the meantime I decided to do a guitar shootout with these 2 new mics, and also my Octava 012 and the SM57.

I used a Collings OM, and put the guitar through the paces fingerpicking, flatpicking and strumming. I placed the mic at a neutral distance, exactly 12" from the 17th fret on all soundbites. As much as possible, I played exactly the same for each mic. I made adjustments to the input gain to compensate for slight differences in level.
I plugged the mics into the Apogee Ensemble for mic pre's and conversion, and recorded into Logic with no compression, EQ, reverb or mastering. The soundbites are 320 MP3s, supposedly similar sound quality as wave files.

Although the placement may not have been ideal for each mic, the consistent placement gives the listener a good relative comparison between each microphone, as you will see.

You can draw your own conclusions as to what mic is best. Feel free to give your opinions.

My take is this:

Neumann TLM 49: This mic was the most classy and dimensional of the bunch. Excellent balance, although in retrospect I'd have moved all the mic placements a few frets toward the nut, as they all were a tad bassy. This mic was sweet in all types of playing. Made the guitar sound woody and expensive.

Shure KSM44: At half the price of the Neumann, it was darn close to sounding as present and dimensional. I recorded in cardiode only, but this mic was the only to have the versatility of 3 patterns. A great sounding mic in it's own right.

Octava MK 012. I've been pleasantly surprised by this mic on acoustic guitar over the years. It sits well in tracks and flatters the guitars. Against the other mics, it seemed a bit hazy. This placement was not optimum for the guitar, but it is a quality sounding mic, as you can hear. And it costs half of the KSm44.

Shure SM57: Focused, present and balanced. Against these other more hi fidelity mics, you can hear the low end roll off and its midrange personality. Nothing wrong with this mic for acoustic guitar, a bit of EQ and compression and it could slam in a track. Just not as complex and flattering for solo acoustic guitar.

Hope you enjoy the sounbites. The new vocal soundbites will be added in a following post.

Cheers, John