It's all bout taste 1.

Suppose you have an instrument, if you want to record it, some usual methods are:

• Mic it (closely or far).
• Connect line out from that instrument (if it has one) to a mixer.
• take both natural sound and line out sound (mic+pickup).
• etc..

Which will you chose?

In the 40's, mostly they mic the guitar. Recently get an album with plenty of Robert Johnson songs inside. Yes! the legendary blues guitarist, playing his legendary skills on Gibson L-1. I thought it'll be fantastic. But when I play the CD, i realized that it was recorded on 1936... It shouldn't sound awesome..

That time, there were LP, that is, Long Play. I believe, if they were to record just ONE song into ONE LP, it should sound nice. But since it's a 'Long' Play, they were trying to compress everything into one LP. So, what they did?

• Cut off the bass frequencies, because bass frequencies carries the heaviest memory.
• But it really sounds bad.. Again, the engineers those days did something:
• Boost back the low frequencies on the phonograph itself. But, it didn't sounds that awesome as well, yet at least better.

If a LP recorded with just ONE song, i think it should sound very nice, seriously, since it manage to play even the ultrasonic range. We must ask Phil Jones from AAD about why is this so.. He is an expert, tons of researches on speakers' behaviour on this company.

Hence, equalization makes the early 40's recordings very unpleasant to listen to.

Today? We equalize(EQ) the sound as well. But does it sounds better? Some yes , some not so..

The dilemma are:

• If i want to record a guitar sound, should i place my mic in front of the guitar? Or at the sound hole? Or 45 degree to the sound hole? Or to the bridge? Or through a warm sound amplifier? Or through line out? Or through line out via my favorite Boss direct box? * Every sounds are different.

• If we want to record what exactly our ear hears, we place double mics at ear level. Will it records ambient noise? Will it be lack of bass? Will it left out the 'pick' sound?.....

• If we record with mic, which mic? Some laggy mics produce 'warm' sound. Some ultra-fast-reaction mics produce too 'dry' the sound. Some bass are heavy, Some mid range frequencies are full. How?

It's all depends on the artist. Know why Jimi Hendrix's Strat can be tuned to such a powerful state? Why my Yamaha never ever get BBKing's Gibson sweet sound? Know why people buy Steinway and Sons and not multi-purpose Clavinova even the price are 10 times more?

They want that sound. They tuned the tone till what they want.

If the recording studio were to ask Mr B to record via the studio ultra expensive rack system+guitar amp, Mr B will stick to his maybe not so expensive old lovely sweet amp. Musicians, is that so?

So, it's all bout taste.