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If I want to have a guitar only for recording purposes, should I be looking for something specific? By that I mean, not caring about playing live also means I don't care about how loud the guitar is, because I can just pull up the gain of the microphone. And maybe, and I just say maybe, dreadnoughts for example have a body shape that everybody likes because they sound good when you are playing at a campfire.

Buying a smaller guitar (like a 'concert' body shape) would also save me money, while maintaining that same sound via pulling the gain of mic. I am probably wrong with that? Please correct me if I am.

So should I be searching for a specific body shape, wood, series of guitars?

The reason why I am asking this, is because Breedlove have a series of guitars called Studio where they say and I quote:

Nothing matches the excitement of recording your music, and the Studio Series is specifically designed to be your perfect companion any time you lay down tracks. Its stunning clarity and articulation come from pairing a maple back and sides with a solid Sitka spruce top—a tonewood combination that provides dynamic response and incredible versatility that suits any style of playing and any musical genre.

I don't know if it's just a marketing thing..

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If you're playing a guitar live, you would want it to have the durability that it can be carted round regularly and have sufficient volume. A guitar with thick (or even laminated) panels and heavy bracing isn't going to be as responsive as something with a more delicate construction. The heftier materials will absorb some of the nuances, but it could still be a great guitar to play round a campfire and pass round when people have had a few beers. If you're playing live on stage you made need more volume than any guitar can produce acoustically. It is a lot lot easier to use a guitar with a piezo pickup for stage work than it is to mic it up. However, guitars do normally sound a lot better through a mic than a pickup.

So, for a guitar that you would use in a studio, you can forgo heavy construction, piezo pickups and acoustic volume production. But, smaller bodies give a different timbre to bigger bodies, so it's not all about volume, you may want to use a dreadnought on a recording. There is a case for having a studio guitar, but it's far from essential to get a good recording. If you're a gigging musician, the guitar you play on stage shouldn't be your campfire beater and you should make sure you've got a solid case to protect it from the rigors of gigging.

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  • You may want to use a dreadnought for its specific sound, but in my experience smaller bodies usually work better on recordings. Dreadnoughts have a tendency to sound boomy and either get in the way of other instruments or get lost in the mix, unless you EQ them so thin that you basically have only percussive transients left. But of course this depends a lot on the style of music you're recording.
    – leftaroundabout
    Sep 8, 2016 at 10:05
  • That's what i am talking about. As i don't care about moving around the guitar, playing live, etc, there should be some things that i could not look at and focus on the sound and only. Also a big guitar also means more bass, more boomy sound. Which i want to avoid when recording...
    – Leon Vitanos
    Sep 8, 2016 at 11:59
  • In general the size of a guitar has an effect on how bassy it is, but materials, construction and strings also have an effect. The Breedlove guitars might be exactly what you're looking for, but just because another brand doesn't specifically declare a guitar to be a studio guitar doesn't mean it won't just as suitable as one that does. It pays to have a good mic too. There's no point blowing all your budget on a guitar only to record it through a cheap unresponsive mic.
    – Dave Halsall
    Sep 8, 2016 at 13:00
  • And at the end of the day there is no alternative to actually playing a few - see how they feel, and see how they sound, both to the ear and through a mic.
    – Doktor Mayhem ♦
    Sep 8, 2016 at 14:30
  • Sure i know that this is the way to go. Play and choose what you like. But there is no way i can play Breedlove guitars in Greece. About the mic: I am thinking of a 300$ lewwit 340, small diaphragm microphone.
    – Leon Vitanos
    Sep 8, 2016 at 14:38

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