There's a lot of mysterious statistics and technical data associated with mic techniques, and if you're not a number cruncher at heart it can all be very confusing. I'm going to suggest some stuff to help musicians record their guitars with two mics and think about the process more musically, so they can rock harder and faster.

When you play acoustic or electric, part of the sound you enjoy is the reflected sound of the room around you. It can be fun to have a mic pick up some of that reflected sound so that in the mix a feeling of space can appear. Remember, that's what most effects boxes concern themselves with -- spatial things like reverb and delay.

Try this: find a room that's really "live" sounding, like the kitchen or den with hardwood floors. My feeling about the obvious choice -- bathrooms -- is that they are too small and too harsh for most situations, but use 'em for that harsh surf guitar kinda sound. What you can do that works really well is to place a big mic (dynamic or condenser with a large diaphragm) near the body of the acoustic or the speaker of the amp, to capture the direct sound of what you're playing. Set the second mic (preferrably a small diaphragm condenser) in a "live" spot in the room. If you don't know where that is, have somebody else play so you can walk around and find a spot where there's some good sounding reflections.

Remember, if it sounds good to you, the mic will probably like it too.

When you're mixing the results, use panning and relative level to control the spaciality of the sound. For kicks, try reversing the phase of one track and see what happens. The cool thing about all this is that you can come up with some truly unique sounding stuff and not blow a budget. Have fun!

Fred Bogert has spent three decades enjoying all facets of the music industry. He now owns Studio C Productions.