My favorite mic chain for acoustic guitar is: U47 -20 pad strasser / Schoeps 1955 preamp Fairchild style compression. I got more favorites. But this sounds real nice.
Curious what’s yours. It’s nice if you insert some pics.
Today I got an Arienne audio vintage k47 style apsule ( it sounds not very different than an old k49 an vf 14 tube in the circuit.

The chain I have access to and use right now more often than not goes like this: Sennheiser 441 - Daking MicPreEq - KlarkTeknik EQP - Daking Fet III.

Schoeps CMC 6 & MK4 pair → Buzz Audio MA-2.2B → RME ADI-2 Pro FS R Black Edition


I use the Royer FlexBar. It’s a bit easier to adjust than the usual suspects.

Were I recording in a better space—and money was no object—I might have opted for a DPA 4006 pair.

Crazy articulated sound. Very nice. Sounds so completely different than my chain and sound.

Nice chain. Colorful.

Most of my gear has been selected to support field recordings of choirs and small classical ensembles. However, I play solo fingerstyle steel string guitar and do some occasional self-recording of my playing. My favorite chain right now is a pair of Gefell M221 omnis (but haven't used them much yet for my guitar recordings) in an A-B spaced pair array, going into a Gordon Model 5 preamp, then to a Metric Halo ULN-8. My usual guitar space is not so good, especially for omnis, so I use several gobos behind, to the sides, and above the mics.

a vintage neumann km84 into a neve preamp

recording a guitar (nylon or steel string? strumming or more refined techique?) is about the combination of many factors: the room, the instrument, the artist, the composition, the arrangement, the mic technique - only then the 'chain'...

anyway, not much love for (tube) ldc's here and whenever possible, i like to take the preamp out of the equation as well, so i'm using digital mics - often in m/s, rarely a spaced pair, sometimes an additional mic on the fingerboard, mostly a pair (or two) of ambis.

oh, and i like recording the piezo pickup via a high impedance d.i. whenever possible...

I like a little colors in my recordings. I hear, you don’t like that so much. If it’s works for you.
For me sometimes it changes per session or per week.
pencilextremist Wrote km84 . I have also the km84 . I like it a lot.

gefell umt70s is very good too on acoustic guitar, I think of it like a 47 but with an M7 capsule it has a bit more high end, incredibly smooth sounding, no harshness at all.

neumann u87ai into shelford channel sounds very nice for me. cardioid mode, pretty much in front of the base of the neck about a foot away, little to no eq, very mild compression, and a touch of blue silk makes nylon strings sing.

here's a little sample:

there's a difference between deliberately adding colour (which imo is nothing but adding some form of 'distortion'/degrading the sound) vs trying to capture the sound that happens in front of the mics as accurately as possible (which is what i consider to be my job as a tech).

anyway, i got a toy here with which i can paint if i want: the focusrite liquid 4pre - although highly effective and versatile, it's rare that an artist favours results over a 'clean capture' (IF that's possible at all)...

...but other than moving mics or changing mic system, of course one can also swap mics, preamp, converter etc. to get a slightly different result.

My favourite chain consists of a very, very good guitar and a good player and a melody that touches the heart. After that, the job is 98% done and everything i do is just window dressing.

Then... what is the job of the recorded track? Solo guitar? (A) Chords? (B) Single notes that need to be fattened up a bit? (C) A guitar in a song that features prominently? (D) A guitar that is kind of like a percussion instrument in a whole band context? (E) (and so on and so on)
A) can't go wrong with a good SDC into a clean pre, do i need compression.. or does he (she, it, pony, whatever) play just play it as we need it?
B) Coles 4038, tube pre .. which already is a bit compressing
C) A again .. or any nice mic that is up to the job, U47, Beyer 930, etc.etc.
D) Beyer M160 so it doesn't get too icky, tube pre (or TG) to soften it a bit more .. compression depending on how fast or slow that thing is
E) if it needs to be showy, why not use one of the mics that have no resonances in their membrane, a John Hardy pre or a Gordon or a GML or (or, or) and a Dave Hill Titan compressor to pretend i didn't compress anything.

So what is my favourite chain? The fact that you need a whole lot of different mics, preamps and compressors. If i could do everything with the same 5 things over and over, i couldn't show off really, really hard and nurturing the (completely unwarranted) fantasy in the heads of musicians that i am kind of a mad genius = self marketing. I mean, i'm not the best (or even the ranking 13848st or something) and everybody with good ears, judgement, the right circumstances/ tools can deliver musically pleasing results. Rule #1 : don't distract from the song. Rule #2 : after that, anything goes.

In this thread , nothing is bad and every week could be different.

KM54 into Mastering Lab preamp.

Never hear of the ML-1 preamp but looks nice.

It is a Nashville favorite developed by the legendary Doug Sax and his brother Sherwood (RIP).
For example, Gary Paczosa, the nine time Grammy-award winning sound engineer and producer (Alison Krauss, Nickel Creek, Dolly Parton, Dixie Chicks, John Prine, etc. ), records acoustic using a KM54 into the ML pre.

However, as others have mentioned, much depends on the circumstances of the recording. If this were a classical guitar recording, I skip the tube gear and go with something from DPA or Schoeps into a clean pre such as the Millennia HV3.

They’re amazing. I did a jazz record last year where everything was on ML preamps. It was a private studio (not ours) and really well equipped - we were super happy with the captures.