Mike advice

[Spike Vincent]

[quote name='tom1946' timestamp='1347888466' post='1806154']
Ok thanks for the input, much appreciated.
Firstly, in the 60's when I was in a showband everyone around here called them mikes so I'll stick with that

Problem she has is she plays a jumbo 12 string which makes it hard to be near the mike, even though it's on a boom, she really has to think about staying put which isn't easy considering what else she has to do.

Sooo a mike that would pick up from about a foot away would be ideal, the vocals all go to a desk so it's easily adjusted. The best thing we have is a Peavey which another talentless person has claimed as her own even though it belongs to the church

The Sennheiser 845 sounds like it may do a better job??
[/quote]


Bit puzzled by this,why can't she use a long boom stand to get the mic closer?

I've always been of the understanding that traditionally the SM 57 has suited the female voice better than the SM 58,but bear in mind it has no pop sheilding so use it with an external popshield.

Edited September 17, 2012 by Spike Vincent

[tom1946]

we have 2 speakers forward from us so we rely on the mixer guy to get it right
The boom we have for her is adequate but it's hard not to move when you are the main rhythm player, her mind tends to be on 3 things at once so mike discipline isn't top of the list when playing and singing.

From what I can see a supercardiod would be best?

[BassTractor]

[quote name='tom1946' timestamp='1347908972' post='1806554']
it's hard not to move when you are the main rhythm player, her mind tends to be on 3 things at once so mike discipline isn't top of the list when playing and singing.[/quote]

This again points to Cheeky Mikey and he should preferably come with a Sound Transmitting Device, but those tend to stress your assumed budget gravely, unless the church will pay. If you can find a cheap one, check back with us (not me - I don't know any of them personally) or search for serious tests.
In a budget situation, I still feel that in total she may be best served by the ones proposed by Stevie.


[quote name='tom1946' timestamp='1347908972' post='1806554']
From what I can see a supercardiod would be best?[/quote]

Practically speaking and simply: yes.
Do not get taken in by the word itself though. I once had some cheapish supercardioids (still like 50 or 60 quid) that were rubbish as to feedback.
The essence is to choose a Potent Mike like the AKGs, Audio Technicas, Beyerdynamics or Sennheisers. Remember you can't go really wrong with an SM57 (see what Spike wrote), but one has to almost eat the SMs and hide one's face behind them.

best,
bert

Edited September 17, 2012 by BassTractor

[51m0n]

A couple of 'cold hard facts in the light of day' type points.

It doesnt really matter what mic it is, if she's moving around and not paying attention to her mic technique then the level will be all over the place. Physics is not on her side, volume drops with distance from a source with the inverse square law, so for every doubling of distance she is a quarter as loud.

A good engineer can try and help this a bit with a compressor, but as soon as you rely on a compressor you will start to get other artifacts in to at least a small extent (the mic will effectively appear to be more sensitive picking up more ambient noise, she may start to push her voice hard when she thinks about it if she is struggling to hear herself in the monitors).

A decent boom stand set up so the boom is parallel to the floor (or close to) and pretty much fully extended so the stand is well away from her body and guitar is a must, put a cross on the floor where she needs to stand if she is singing.

The other thing to point out is that with the inverse square law the closer to the mic you start off at, the more a tiny change in distance will change the level, so if you are on top of the mic at the beginning and dip back six inches then the level will fall more than if you are a good foot or two away to begin with and dip back the same six inches.

The trouble with being a foot away is that the gain structure on the desk needs to be set to cope with that (ie it will be far hotter into the desk than if she were putting the mic to her lips), and if someone then reaches up and grabs the mic off the stand, or talks into it from an inch away the level is going to be massive. In this case you need a limiter on the mic to catch that kind of issue and save the PA!

There may be issues with feedback (depending on the acoustic and the volume required) but I would imagine you guys aren't exactly Lemmy loud....

A decent mic (condensor or dynamic) should be capable of doing the job fine though as long as the guy at the desk knows what he's doing and your wife is aware of where she needs to be (about a foot or a foot and a half max) in relation to the mic. But you cant get away from it, if she loses sight of the goal (projecting well to the audience [i]via the PA[/i]) then you cant win this battle.

A final technical point, pretty much all the mics mentioned show more or less from proximity effect - whereby the closer the mic is to the sound the more bass lift they will produce. So if you try the approach of backing her off from the mic and turning the mic up (because she is just going to move about and you want to minimise the effect of this on the performance as a whole) then her voice through any of these mics is going to quite possibly sound a bit thin and need some eq to beef it up again.

If you want an example of great mic technique then you would do a lot worse than watching some live K.D.Laing or Tony Bennet, both of whom have impeccable mic technique, no they aren't playing a guitar as well, but thats actually irrelevant...

[Mog]

Beta 57 is usually a good place to start for a female voice. The T-bone 85's are surprisingly good if you want to keep the cost low.

[Spike Vincent]

If she's moving about,how about a head set mic?