Guitar mics revisited

A few weeks ago I asked for input on guitar mics and got lots of awesome feedback. Here’s where I’ve landed for this season of mixing…

• Can’t go wrong with a SM57 or MD421. Nothing changing there.
• I LOVE a Sennheiser 409 but they aren’t made any more and are REALLY hard to find. The Sennheiser 609 is aweful compared to it. On its own, without ever hearing the 409, I thought the 609 was decent but now I’m quite jaded towards it. The good news is that the 906 is readily available ($189) and sounds REALLY close to the 409. Even better, the 906 has three different tone settings onboard that adjust the response. Depending on the rig, I’ve found really workable tone with all three settings. This mic is pretty killer!
• Our old school original vintage CAD E100 is still pretty awesome on Marshall and VOX rigs. If you can find one of the original series of this mic, I think you’ll be surprised by it. (The updated version you can buy new today is dook! Stay away, stay away!)
• Shure KSM32 seems to work a lot better on electric rigs than the KSM44. I’m not sure exactly why – haven’t looked at the frequency response differences between the two. If you play with positioning, I’ve gotten some really nice Marshall & Fender tones with the 32.
• Heil PR30s give me mixed results. I know there are some pretty die-hard Heil fans out there but I’ve only been really impressed with them on toms. Your mileage may vary.
• Looking forward to auditioning an AKG 414 and Royer R121-Live in the next few weeks. Selling stuff has gone really well so now we get to audition and potentially purchase some really cool mics.

The Sennheiser 906 is the clear surprise/die-hard recommendation out of this guitar mic exploration. If you haven’t tried one in your rigs, I would strongly suggest checking it out. I like it so much I’m going to buy 4 more for our other campuses.

If you’ve made it this far in the post, here’s some samples of a recorded guitar amp through a 409, 609, and 906 with the tone settings.

409

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609 Silver Front

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609 Black Back

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906 Flat

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906 Boost Engaged

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Countryman E6S Follow up

If you missed my initial review, you can find the video blog here.

After putting the mic through the paces for a few weeks and in one high profile service, the verdict on these mics is two thumbs up. Everyone can’t say enough positive about them. The drama team is ecstatic because they love the profile and fit. They’ve wished for an alternative to the lav or headset mic for literally years so this is a direct answer to their prayers.

From my perspective, I’m pleased with how they sound – very natural and transparent in a way that isn’t possible with a lav chest-mounted. I also like the fact that they are easy to make virtually disappear on IMAG.

I placed my order today to keep the two demos and will have to add at least two more into the inventory this summer!

You can just see the E6S over his left ear.  The most noticeable part is the cable coming off the back of his ear and around his head.

Guitar Mic

What is your favorite electric guitar mic for live use? Other than SM57 or MD421, I’m hoping to learn about some other great tools that might be lower on the radar. Let’s fill up the comments.

Thanks!

Videoblog REVIEW: Countryman E6S

http://countryman.com/store/product.asp?id=97&catid=2

Speaker Mic

One of our weakest links in the audio chain since I have been at Kensington has been our speaker mics.  We’ve used DPA 4066 headsets for at least 4 years now but I have had a couple issues with what I consider weak points.

• I’m not a big fan of the microdot connector.  It is nice to have the flexibility of being able to use the headset with different brands of wireless manufacturers, but we had regular trouble of that microdot either not being tight enough and causing audio noise, or coming loose through the course of a 3 service day when the speaker is wearing the mic throughout that whole time.
• I really dislike the fact that the mic can move inside the headset assembly so that a speaker could accidentally move the mic from ideal position by hugging someone the wrong way, eating and bending it, or getting their cable caught on something and it tugs the mic in the headset just a bit.
• Even though we used omni-pattern 4066s, we found that placement was extremely critical to get ideal frequency response.  When you combine the mic moving in the headset with the frequency response stuff, I think the 4066 is pretty people intensive to get right.  It was very important for me to personally fit the mic to the speaker each week and go through a pretty lengthy soundcheck to make sure it was positioned properly.  Then still in 25% of the cases, by the time the speaker would actually hit the stage to give the message, it wouldn’t sound like it had in soundcheck.

When I was hanging with my buddies on the crew for the Joyce Meyer conference last summer, I got a great idea from what I saw there to hopefully come up with a better option.  Everyone I know in church production world with the exception of Willow Creek uses a Countryman E6 on their speakers with great results.  However, KCC has historically had nothing with trouble with them.  Fragile build, difficult to place on an artist and not have them move, and reliability trouble during use on stage were most notable.  Also consider that we have a teaching team of 8 people, so re-fitting an E6 to each speaker would be a nightmare.

When Joyce was speaking, I was amazed at the quality of her voice and also loved that I could hardly see the mic on IMAG.  Come to find out, their rig was a cocoa E6 (the medium brown color since a darker mic hides on the skin better than a lighter one) custom-fit to a DPA headset.  That way you get the sound quality benefit of the E6 (I’m not sure there’s a better sounding mic for talking heads) while the stability and fit benefits of a dual ear headset design.  So a few months ago I set out to build our own version of this.

Its pretty easy to do.  All I did is take a DPA headset from an old 4066 that was not fixable, curve the E6 so it fit around one of the ears as you can see in the photo, and then use some small clear heatshrink to mate the two to each other.

What’s so great about this setup is that the headset provides instant stability on the head so the mic position cannot move.  Now when we aim the mic for the speaker, we don’t have to worry about it changing by the time they reach the stage during the service.  I’ve also found that the need to adjust mic placement from speaker to speaker is much less since the distance from ear to mouth doesn’t change when we fit to each speaker – the only thing we’re adjusting is the size of the headset around the back of their head.

Is this setup perfect?  Sadly no.  We’re still struggling with finding the ideal placement for the E6 on the cheek so we don’t get breathing noise or extremely random pops.  I think its just a placement deal so I’m curious for feedback based on what you see here.

However, in spite of the lingering stuff to work out, this mic sounds great, looks fabulous on video, and sufficiently answers all of my problems with the 4066.