Necessity & Invention

Now let’s go back a little further in time before there were contact pickup/mics for the stand-up bass. When I was doing sound for a bunch of bluegrass artists (including Bill Monroe, the king of bluegrass), one trick I learned was to take an Electro-Voice PL5 omni mic, wrap it in a little packing foam, and slip it head up under the tailpiece of the stand-up bass.

This is super easy to implement, the bassist can move around without getting out of a mic pattern, and it’s one less stand on stage. Omni mics aren’t terribly useful for a lot of live gigs, but it’s great to keep one on hand just in case.

Here’s another cool trick when there’s a limited number of mixing channels and there’s drum kit on stage, especially if it’s in a cage: mount an omni on a little drum clamp so it’s positioned straight up on the front of the snare, with the tip about 4 to 5 inches above the head. It will be sitting in the little pocket between the snare and rack toms. Now place the kick drum mic of your choice.

Note that this doesn’t offer the ability of adjust the levels of the kit, put gates on the snare or toms, or even do a stereo pan around the room, but it’s saved my show a few times nonetheless. I’ve done it with a B&K 4007 omni and it sounded stunning, but I’ve also used a much more affordable Audix RTA calibration mic, a really flat omni, and that worked great as well.

More than once I’ve also “buried” an omni condenser mic in the middle of the “toys” section of a drum set. (This is where they put their wood blocks, cowbells, chimes, and the other noisy things they love.)

Because this channel isn’t being fed to the stage monitors, the fact that it’s an omni doesn’t present a gain problem, and because they’re only inches away from loud cowbells and wood blocks also helps with the isolation problem.

Finally, here’s a handy tool to keep in the kit for the “emergency” fiddle – you know, the one that comes with the last-minute fill-in band at a festival. While a traditional overhead mic is one way to capture it, many players won’t stay on-mic, so try a Cherub WCP-60V.

This simple contact pickup mounts in the F-hole of the violin with a padded spring clamp, and it has a long cable with a 1/4-inch plug on the end. It’s a piezo element so it has very high impedance, strongly suggesting not plugging it into a passive DI box with a 100 k-ohm input impedance. Rather, use it with an active DI such as a Whirlwind HotBox with 1 to 5 meg input impedance.

Now here’s the best part. The WCP-60V is available on Amazon for about $5 with free shipping. Certainly it’s not in the league of a $500 Barcus-Berry unit, but with some minor mid-range EQ fixes it can sound pretty darn good. And if it gets broken, lost or stolen on a gig, I’m only out few bucks.

I hope you to try out some of these oddball mic techniques, and perhaps you’ll also be inspired to come up with a few of your own. Remember, all gigs start with the mics and pickups, so the better the sound that’s initially captured, the better the show will sound.