String Section Recording and Amplifying in live concerts

I spent about 12 years doing live sound and recording a very small orchestra that had a very small string section. To make things extra fun, they played just inside the active sound field of the sound reinforcment system.

There's no problem making close-miced acoustic instruments blend provided you use a   90 degree coincident crossed directional (cardiod or hypercardiod) mic pair to record the  whole ensemble from the front center of the group, and then mix and layer in the individual close mic feeds on top of that, panned to resemble their natural locations.  You can vary the level balance between the coincident pair and the close-miced feeds to bring in as much room sound as you desire, as there will probably be plenty of room sound in outputs of the coincident pair. I also used cardiod or hypercardiod mics for the individual mics, typically on mini-boom stands or regular stands with flexible gooseneck extensions on them, those goosenecks being the 3' versions sometimes used with podium mics.

Given your preferences related to room acoustics Ethan, I can see where the characteristic sound of close-micing would be something that you would prefer.  To me it makes the sound of voices in particular both hot and dead.  Musical instrument sounds seem to handle it better.

As I mentioned my professional recording experience is almost all live recording. When possible I mic the performance twice, once with one or just a few coincident pairs, and again with close-up mics. In mix down I mix and match the close and far mics to get a sound that is similar to the live performance, which I mixed for live sound from the same mics, but a vastly different mix.

The multitrack  master(on the order of 24 tracks)allows me to do the second mix for distribution at my leisure.  One relatively cheap easy way to get so many tracks is a collection M-Audio Delta 1010LTs. 

There's a well-known studio in the area variously known as Superdisc, The Disc, and The Recording Institute of Detroit that I visit occasionally.

Their standard recording work flow is close mic'd recording, often in tiny studios like drum or vocal booths, with no mics at all off of direct boxes, and then they add carefully tuned digital reverb from a classic Lexicon (if memory serves) reverb synth.  

They have a big legacy console that they use as a housing for its mic preamps and actually do all their recording and mixing with Pro Tools. I suspect that a lot of the old studios that are still in business have quietly switched over to doing this.

What some might find interesting is that they once had an extensive mic cabinet with all the old classics that cost a lot new and have become almost priceless, but they themselves have pretty well switched over to using modern mid-priced versions with similar pickup patterns in the $100-250 price range.

Which is more surprising? DAC worship, amp worship, or Mic worship. ;-)