Yeah, I know. A mic stand.
Screw this, I'ma rave about boobies and
avatars. NO! I'll stay on topic.
So my keyboardist has one of those
Ultimate Support Column multi-keyboard stands. It's an old workhorse, beaten and abused, but still kicking strong. As we're simplifying his rig and upgrading stuff, we discover that there's a clamp-on boom-arm mic stand that is designed specifically for his Column. So we order it up. It arrives at the store. I go check it out. IT IS AWESOME! Not because it attaches to a pathetic keyboard stand, but because of the design of the boom itself.
If you look at the photo I linked to, you can see the stand on the column. There's two knobs: one for adjusting the angle, and one for adjusting the depth of the boom arm. If you've ever used a mic stand with a boom arm, you already hate that little thumb knob for adjusting the depth of the boom arm. My mic stand had its thumbscrew strip out so it's ruined until I can drill and tap another screw hole. If you twist these style boom arms, they will spin loose from the lower section of the mic stand, the straight section. Then it'll drift around loosely. Gotta fight with it to retighten it again.
Well, this new mic stand's boom arm has ONE KNOB. A big fat rubber coated easily gripped knob, that tightens the clamping base around a ball on a stud. The clamp has big rubber washers that grab that ball stud. It also clamshell clamps the boom arm at the same time, instead of a thumbscrew digging into the steel of the boom arm and creating a bunch of crappy little divots and scraping up the paint. This one knob adjusts everything all at once! You can tighten it shut, or keep it snug for slight adjustments. But twisting it side to side will not loosen the clamping base from the lower stand! The ball socket design lets the clamp spin on the ball and the ball's post stays tightly threaded to the lower stand.
Folks, as an engineer who tinkers with mechanical prototypes all day, involving pneumatics, hydraulics, mechanical motion control, all kinds of fasteners and machine parts... this mic stand is pure brilliance. There's no severe-friction points, there's easily replacable rubber discs, there's no stripped threads or gouged steel pipes, it's just quick easy and pretty much foolproof. I've been hating mic stands for years, I hate all the mic stands I currently have because of their crap boom arms.
I'm ordering a dozen of these things and replacing ALL of my boom arms on ALL my mic stands. Even the new ones that aren't yet beat up! Simply cuz I don't ever want to deal with the old crappy style boom arms again! I'm even taking this to the local venues I play to convince them to replace all their beat-to-crap mic stands!
I can't believe I'm all geeked up about a MIC STAND!!!
\m/ \m/
Musical product of the year, as far as I'm concerned. So universally simple, and should become the new standard for every respectable stage.
