String Scratching On Guitars

[Ste69]

That annoying scratching sound you get while recording an acoustic guitar and the guitarist slides from one fret to another, it's painful, is there any way at all to get rid of it?

[paulears]

you can eq, but that usually ruins the sound - mic technique before recording is the usual thing to minimise it, however, some players just have very noisy technique! Much depends on the type of fret noise/string noise you are hearing.

[Ste69]

It's the scratching of their fingers on the stings and they slide frets

[*bigrod*]

aye, It's 99% down to playing technique.

The Type of strings can also have an effect.

 

Mic placement will only get you so far, EQ will do very little to remove it if anything at all.

 

anyways, why would you want to get rid of it? it adds character to the sound.

IMO there are too many people trying to sterilise musical character.

 

just a thought.

 

r

[Ste69]

Ah ok, at least I'm not doing something wrong, can blame the guitarist =P

[paulears]

I think managed string/fret noise adds a certain something, but some guitars are almost unrecordable - Some even have more noise on the pickup output, than real acoustic noise - my electro acoustic is pretty good acoustically, but the piezo pickups really emphasise this kind of noise in a very non-musical way!

[Simon MFR]

I'll go with bigrod on this, I dont quite know why you would want to eliminate it. There is a character to the sound of fret noise and most like it on their recordings, I know I do. If you do want to loose it a little, maybe use a little fret oil on the board, refrain from wanging a delay on the insert (which would extenuate the noise) and put your mic next to the right (or left, depending which way he plays) ear of the guitarist.

[Ste69]

I tend to use the piezo pickups through a DI box rather than a mic as it's a lot clearer I find (If you have half decent pickups)

 

The reason I wanted to eliminate it is because the song was supposed to be a soft lullaby type song but every so often you hear a penetrating scratch on the fretboard which kinda ruins the song.

[J Pearce]

On a recording?

 

I'd nearly always go for a decent large diaphragm capacitor mic on an acoustic guitar if I was recording, unless some other reason eliminated that option (perhaps recording live with a full band).

[Ste69]

I don't have access to one of those

[cedd]

You might just get away with a de-esser set to the right frequency. Have a play, they seem to be more of a problem solver than people give them credit for.

[Ste69]

I was wondering if one of them would do it, I'll give it a try, thanks

[PoppaDom]

I stand with some of the others on this one. The fret noise is part of the character of the instrument, to remove it is going against many basic principals. There are artistic reasons to reduce/remove it but thats something for an production engineer/producer/artist to decide between them.

 

Regards

Poppadom

[paulears]

A great resource for recording guitars is on the SOS website. here

 

Much depends on the instrument and player, plus the kind of sound you want (or don't want). If you only have some basic dynamic mics, all isn't lost as the lack of HF isn't an issue here, for help in solving your problem. The easiest thing is to put on a pair of sealed headphones, pfl the mic and then experiment moving it around until you find the place where the wanted sound is best, and the unwanted sound the least - this is where you then clamp the mic. Nearer the sound hole is boomier, bassier and less fret/string noise - towards the neck is more HF, more string effect, more finger noise and a better recording of articulation. Consider perhaps even trying two mics to get the balance right between wanted/unwanted?

[Just Some Bloke]

mic technique before recording is the usual thing to minimise it,

I'm with both Paul and bigrod on this. You don't need to lose it altogether as it adds character, but if you want to reduce the amount you will need to use a hypercardoid mic pointed away from the source of the unwanted sound. That is significantly easier in the studio than live where the guitarist is likely to move around more.

 

Good luck!