Andreasan, google the term ‘microphone comb filtering.’ This is a very important concept when setting up multi-mic situations. The Microphone Book covers all this and much more - I cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone making home recordings or playing in public with amplification.
In old videos of Ravi Shankar, you will find everything from ribbon mics up close to shorty shotguns four feet in front of the players. The microphone is only the first part of capturing sound - what is the mic feeding into? This is why there is mystique around old mixing boards - the first ones were hand built by audio engineers. There are now bands who are returning to ribbon mics and tube amplifiers again for the distinctive sound - it’s more of the analog vs digital argument, plus the very different ways that old and new mics turn sound waves to electrical signal.
A sound board with EQ (more than just a patch board to get all the mics to the amplifier/speaker) allows individual bands of sound frequencies to be pumped up or hushed. Use a Neumann U87 microphone with the right board (or a Royer R121 turned backwards!) and you will have plenty of jingle jangle. The book Mastering Audio by Bob Katz is another gem that explains how to get what you are hearing onto a CD or a WAV file - it isn’t as easy as just pluggin components together. Turns out this is a whole field to master.
That said, it is astonishing what you can do with the voice memo app on an iPhone - it is wicked clever, and cuts out a lot of noise: there is filtering software in there trying hard to find the sound that is up front and suppress the smaller sounds in the background. I’m sure there are USB microphones and laptop programs that are balanced and work together to be either a PA system driver or a recording studio. AVID and ProTools are two fairly ubiquitous programs. You can convert the proprietary Apple sound file extension into an MPEG using iTunes - again, consult the interwebs for the series of keystrokes that allow your sound to exit Appleland.
One other microphone that might be interesting to explore is the ‘contact microphone,’ a stick-on piezo disc that is picking up vibrations from the instrument rather than the air. There are (like with all microphones) expensive and cheap versions, and even home-built kits available from sites like Reverb, but nearly all need some form of pre-amplification - they generally don’t do well just plugged into an amplifier. Stuck to the dou, a contact mic will get everything, including handling sounds on the neck, but with the gain adjusted and a separate cardioid mic in front of the shamisen you might get a really interesting sound. Contact mics open a whole rainbow of sounds - you can get some really weird wonderful sounds from solid objects, like pulling a wet finger squeakily over the dou. The under-saddle mics on some acoustic guitars are piezo contact mics in a skinny strip form. Interesting things to work with - I am building a hydrophone for whale and dolphin monitoring using a piezo mic kit.
It all comes down to really playing with what equipment you end up being able to afford and getting the most out of it, and that comes with experience, just like everything else.
I would add one last thought, and I think it has been put forward several times by many on this forum - sometimes a great performance has nothing to do with the sound. A great performance comes from you, your love of the the music and the connection with the audience. Sell it! Smile! Put on a show for the nice folks!
