Lavalier mic (or similar) for ambient feed?

[Aidan]

Using my IEMs and the Behringer XR18 has revolutionised my monitoring experience but there are some situations where an aux feed back from the desk is not available. Currently my solution is to put an SM58 either on a stand (or even quicker and dirtier, on the floor) to feed in enough ambient sound from monitors etc to give me a reasonable working mix. However it's a little inelegant and I wondered whether Velcro-ing a lavalier mic to the back of my CP4 would give me a reasonable alternative. Thoughts? If not a lav, is there a small form alternative which might also work?

[mcgoo]

I have a Crown PZM mic that I put on the floor, usually about half way between the drums and a vocal monitor. If I have an aux send from the board I may or may not mix some of the ambient mic in, depending on how good the mix is from the aux send.

[Reezekeys]

When I was gettting my in-ears rig together I had exactly the issue you have. Then I remembered that I had an old Tascam DR05 handheld recorder. Guess what, it works very nicely as an ambient mic for my in-ears setup. Just put it into record ready and the mic outputs from the line out. Each set of 2 AA batteries lasts me about 10 shows.

 

Bonus - it's stereo! Yes, had to get that in... but think about it, "ambience"... stereo...

 

So if you have one of these, or a Zoom or equivalent, you might want to give it a shot.

[Ulf]

I have a great sounding AKG clip-on mic that I use for various "ambience" input like this. I don't remember the model number but I got it second hand for next to nothing -- when checking the specs afterwards it seems to have been a top of the line mic at some point. I sometimes use it for recording piano and as drum overhead. Great sounding little thing.