The first thing to consider is your guitar. It probably needs not to be said but make sure your guitar is tuned properly. It should be second nature but you’d be surprised at how many demos are floating around where the musicians go from one song to the next without first re-tuning their instruments. It also helps to have relatively new, and clean, strings. Again, this is a matter of preference, but new strings have a much brighter, and easier to record, sound. Older strings can come out muddy sounding and you may find yourself tweaking the EQ a little more to get the right tone.
The second thing to consider is your song. Is the acoustic guitar to be prominently featured in the mix, or will it serve more as background rhythm? That’s not to say that care doesn’t need to be taken in both instances but it does matter. If the acoustic guitar is going to in the front of the mix you will want to be sure that it fits with the feel of the piece, and experimenting with mike placement before recording will be more desirable. By having the guitar set further back in the mix you can rely more on basic miking techniques.
What are those basic techniques? Simply placing the mike directly over the sound hole is one. Anywhere between six to twelve inches is fine. This method is frowned upon many sound engineers but it is still widely used. For more bass you can move the mike’s focus towards the bell of the guitar (the lower half). To increase treble, point the mike more towards the neck. One so-called “sweet spot” is to direct the microphone towards the twelfth fret. Care must be taken here on how close you place the mike because the closer you get to the neck the more the chance is that you will pick up some unwanted sounds such as fret buzz, or left hand finger movements.
Have you ever just recorded yourself playing guitar using only a tape recorder, or boombox, with a built in mike? Did you notice how you sometimes get a clean, uniform sound using this extremely simple method? Perhaps that’s all you want with your demo recording. How do you get that with a more powerful mike that tends to pick up everything? Direct the mike slightly away from the instrument. Not too far away, but point it slightly upwards and set twelve inches back. Also let back a little on the mike’s strength. A mike that is too “hot” will defeat the purpose.
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