Jump to content


Please note: You can easily log in to MPN using your Facebook account!

Mic Bar - review and warning!!!!


Recommended Posts

Last week I found a Gibralter cymbal stand at the thrift store for $11. Fully functional, heavy, has a weighted boom and can go from about 3' to well over 6'.

 

I've got a "Mic Booth and Isolation Box" thread running down a ways. The primary purpose of the iso box is to block acoustic guitar and vocals from bleeding into each other's microphones.

A vocal mic set back a bit into the box and aiming upward combined with a pair of mics placed about 6" behind the edge of the box and aiming downward at the guitar provides an acceptable level of separation ( NOT perfect!!!).

 

Using two mic stands and working around the speaker stand that holds the iso box leaves a mic boom protruding out into a walkway.

 

I thought to buy a mic bar for the cymbal stand and place it on the other side, eliminating the obstruction and making things simpler. After surfing the web, I decided to try the On-Stage MY700 Deluxe Stereo Mic Bar. It was cheap and looked pretty OK for my limited purpose. It arrived today.

 

There is a threaded ferrule in the center of the bar so you can thread it onto a mic stand. I wanted to drill a hole through the center to put the bar on the cymbal stand. As I drilled the bar, having drilled through the center of the ferrule, it suddenly came off completely. See photo, there is not much holding the ferrule onto the bar. The blurb touted this as being able to support 6 mics, I would not trust it to support any mic I liked enough to use!!!

 

Yeah, I know, you get what you pay for. I get that. For my purpose, the bar is firmly clamped onto a stout threaded metal shaft and held in place with two compressed felt washers. On a cymbal stand it's fine. I can use it without worrying about anything.

 

Photos attached. If you are considering a mic bar, shop around, find a quality piece and spend the money. It will be worth it when it doesn't break off and plummet to the floor with your mics on it.

Or use a cymbal stand!!!! Cheers, Kuru

1455.thumb.jpg.db29725de34a9e395cd3ad1b89738853.jpg

1456.thumb.jpg.545307d0635c40cdaca2eb18c68b8366.jpg

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • Replies 11
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

From the photo, it looks like that threaded ferrule and bar were glued together rather than welded. If it were mine, I'd fix it by putting it back in position with a screw and nut to hold the pieces together, silver braze the pieces together, then remove the screw. It would burn off the shiny chrome plating, but I'd have my stereo bar back.

 

AEA makes various multi-mic assemblies, some of which are probably beefy enough to hold up your vocal isolation box with an R44 mounted in it . . . for a few hundred bucks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, it's probably glued and the heat from drilling caused the glue to fail. They didn't strip the black paint off the bottom of the ferrule, glueing something to the paint on something else is not a reliable connection!!!!!!

 

I've got what I want from it, firmly clamped in a cymbal stand through the hole I drilled. It isn't going anywhere. The ferrule is in the trash, where it belongs.

The threaded knobs for fastening mic holders aren't great quality either, useable but no more than that.

I probably won't use it for much else but I could do drum overheads or a stereo room mic with this rig and trust it not to fail.

 

All my other mic stands are the standard K&M stands with a small boom arm. Good enough for just about any single mic I have, the Neat King Bee is a hefty piece and I wouldn't extend the boom horizontally and expect it to stay put.

 

There are better mic bars out there for not a huge sum. On the other hand, heavy, solid mic stands get spendy pretty quickly, especially with a wide tripod base. If you need them, you need them. Being a "great scrounge" I'll just keep an eye out for decent drum hardware. I've also got a solid Gitzo Reporter tripod that could be converted to for mic use if needed but not the right form factor for fitting into a fairly tight place, the tripod is very wide and rigging a boom arm to it would be a real PITA. It's solid and reliable though, I trust it to support a camera and lens so I'd trust it for a couple of microphones too.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I needed to get mics 15-20 feet up in the air to record a church organ, I'd borrow a light stand. They fold up to be pretty compact, and with sand bags on the legs, they're plenty stable. I didn't use it with heavy mics, though, KM84s, mostly.

 

I am pretty familiar with photography equipment, was my major in college. I have a backdrop system that I now use to hang heavy quilts over the wall behind my monitors. I've got a 9' ceiling and the stands hit the ceiling before they are fully extended so I'm guessing 10'. I'd need to rig something to hang mics on the cross bar but I'm sure it's been done.

 

My question is - how did you decide that 15-20 feet up was the best spot in the room to record the church organ? Kind of difficult to sit up there and listen, no? I will admit it probably impressed your clients and that is a good reason for it.

 

The insane part of my mind now wonders how many helium balloons it would take to pull an SDC with a cord on it (the cord is probably the heavy part) up to that height. I guess it would be pretty tough to aim it hanging off a balloon anyway...

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

For pipe organ, that's where the action is. Depending on the instrument, it could be even higher. Because the pipes are essentially in small rooms overhead, getting up to where they are speaking is mandatory if you want to control the direct to reverberant sound ratios. Organs get very muddy and indistinct if you don't get enough direct sound.

 

The other reason you go very high is to reduce the front to back issues for a flown array. The higher the array, the more the distance to the back gets closer to the distance in front. This is a critical parameter for a main pair or Decca tree over an orchestra. You need the array placed front to back in the room to get the right blend of direct/reverberant sound. Then you need it high enough to get the front/back balance correct. Then you need the microphone capture angles correct for the width you need to them to hear. So, typically 12-17' up is where you find these in an orchestral context. The classical/film people use very large, heavy and stable stands as a result, heavily sandbagged. Today, common practice includes putting a 9 microphone array up there to record for immersive audio. At $2-3K per mic (or $15-40k ea if you have vintage Neumanns up there), it gets serious real fast. Safety issues for people underneath, sonic issues to get it in the right place. Big hassles. The alternative is calling in professional riggers to hang the arrays, and then the adjustment issues still exist. Scissor lifts are often rented.

 

You probably won't like the price, but AEA makes "buy once for a lifetime" microphone positioning bars. They are precision tools, with markings for all the common spacings, and even the rotational angles if you are working with the Williams curves, etc. They come in several lengths.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

My question is - how did you decide that 15-20 feet up was the best spot in the room to record the church organ? Kind of difficult to sit up there and listen, no? I will admit it probably impressed your clients and that is a good reason for it.

 

By getting to the gig early and having someone play the organ while I'm setting up the mic. A large boom stand didn't get it high enough, and the light stand we had along wouldn't go any higher than 20 feet, so just put the mic where it got the most even coverage.

 

The insane part of my mind now wonders how many helium balloons it would take to pull an SDC with a cord on it (the cord is probably the heavy part) up to that height. I guess it would be pretty tough to aim it hanging off a balloon anyway...

 

Flying something from a balloon is something that gets joked about but as far as I know it's impractical unless it's designed for the purpose, like a weather balloon. Those suckers are BIG. If you had a 50 foot ceiling, you could probably get the mic up 25 feet before the balloon would hit the ceiling.

 

You could mount the mic on a solid piece of wood or maybe plastic, then attach three guy wires to the disk and anchor them to the floor. That would allow you to aim the mic. But with a mic up that high and 20 feet back from the pipes, it's probalby going to be an omni anyway, so who cares which way it's pointing? Though you probably don't want it to sway in the breeze.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I appreciate you humoring me with my questions!!!

Great answers and I learned something. I used to work in marketing for UpRight in Selma CA, they made all different types of aerial work platforms.

Handy contraptions when you need one!

 

I was the Photoshop guy.

 

I've looked at a few truly nice mic bars. I'd need nicer stands and mics to justify owning one - unless my endless scrounging about turns one up.

That said, I could have gotten a much better one than the one in the OP for not a huge amount more money. For that matter it would not be all that difficult to make something, a visit to Hardware Sales would set me up.

The "European" standard thread is a common bolt size and I have the adapters for USA mic clips. Drill a couple of holes in a bar of metal, done.

 

This is working well now and will probably stay where it is mostly.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ebay requested a review "Are you happy with your new Product X?" sort of deal.

 

I've never filled one out before, delete and move on. I filled out this one.

 

I was honest, it was not pretty.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ebay requested a review "Are you happy with your new Product X?" sort of deal.

 

I get one of those just about every time I buy something from Micro Center. Sometimes it's something that I can actually write about. More often, though, it's a box of batteries or a few flash drives. I should probably write a detailed review of a battery some time and have it ready to send in next time I pick up a box at the store.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ebay requested a review "Are you happy with your new Product X?" sort of deal.

 

I get one of those just about every time I buy something from Micro Center. Sometimes it's something that I can actually write about. More often, though, it's a box of batteries or a few flash drives. I should probably write a detailed review of a battery some time and have it ready to send in next time I pick up a box at the store.

 

:laugh:

 

"Besides voltage, this battery offers current. The standard size is convenient for using in items that are made for that configuration." lol

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

In the end, I removed the adjustable (and constantly self adjusting!!!) bars and mounted my new pair of Neat Worker Bees with their shock mounts directly on the center bar.

So I could have bought the even cheaper one - so it goes. I've got it securely clamped down to the cymbal holder on a Gibraltar heavy duty cymbal stand and I really like not having to use 2 stands.

 

Lots of acoustic guitar tracking going on here so it's handy to set something up and just leave it.

 

The more expensive stereo bars are worth the money. I knew that going in, buy nice or buy twice. This should be OK for now.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...