California - My First Full Non-Me Mix

A friend of mine recently got back into playing and has started recording also. He decided for his first foray to do a cover of "California" by Mick Flannery. I haven't bothered to listen to the original since I wanted to approach the song without any preconceptions. He recorded the song himself in Cubasis and then converted the tracks to import into Reaper. (He's in the process of trying out Reaper, Cubasis came with his audio interface) He did a rough mix that had WAY too much reverb and no panning at all. Everything was dead center and echo-y. I took what he gave me and think I improved upon it a good bit. Any thoughts or tips on the mix for future efforts?

I agree with the comments on the vocal clicks and noise.You might be able to remove some with careful editing or using a Volume envelope on the track and,"Ducking" the offending parts by zooming right in. The acoustic sounds a but dull.If on a budget and you can re-record take round wound strings off if they are old and boil them in a pan of water with half an egg cup of washing up liquid for half an hour.This will clean the gunge out of the windings and brighten them back up for a while. Also see section 17 of the Reaper 3 manual on channel splitting the Acoustic into different frequencies and panning them.Also a little subtle stereo chorus on the guitar can enhance the sound and give it more depth with a touch of reverb.The free Classic Chorus is nice for this, HTH :)

Recording Acoustic Guitar can be one of the hardest jobs and why there's so many dedicated pages and tip sites to it, just a couple.