Inspired to experiment

[Champagne]

Hey everyone,

The other day I was posting in a thread here about a DPA mic and a art preamp, one of those little brick things. So, it has inspired me so mess around with a mic. I have had a audix m1290 miniture condenser mic and I have an old art studio mp mic pre, similar to the one in the other thread but without the tone shaping things.

So here is what it looks like on the bass:


I quick and dirty used a nylon screw through a tailpiece hole with 2 rubber bushings on either side of the tailpiece to isolate it from vibrations and to keep the weight down as low as possible. I then recorded it using audacity on my mac (sorry about the poor fade at the end) Here is the recording:

http://soundcloud.com/sound-drifter/audix-mic-sample

The bass it an eastman 305.

I kind of like it. It has this pipe-organish sound. I have no idea how this would work on stage with a loud band and all, but I was playing through a small playback system in the live room and I had it pretty loud and no feed back. I know that isn't a stage. I do suspect a low-pass filter would be essential for stage at the bare minimum, but neat. This place inspires me

[DoubleMIDI]

I would try it a bit closer to the top to get more bass volume (hopefully).
Maybe put it under the tailpiece?

[Champagne]

I tried that. No workikie. When I get the mic close to the top, it gets really honky sounding. This is a supercardioid mic, so maybe that is why but it doesn't make sense to me. If I lay the mic right next to the top, the bass doesn't come up at all. Usually when you set a mic near a source, take it off-axis, proximity effect takes place. Not so with this mic. Neither on nor off-axis brought up the bass up close. I am actually baffled but I do know it takes some distance for low frequencies to come together. I've had this mic for probably 4 years and this is the first I have used it.

I did another recording. I altered the mic placement slightly. It now points to the inside back corner of the bass bridge leg. Still on the tailpiece. Definitely better as far as bass goes.

http://soundcloud.com/sound-drifter/audix-mic-sample-2

[DoubleMIDI]

You might want to try the rubber band mounting method from afterlengths to between the bridge feet with this mic (somewhere here on talkbass).
I tried this once with an Oktava MK-012 with omni, cardioid and hypercardioid and liked the omno and hypercardioid more than the cardioid. Not as elegant as your solution but worth a try to compare it to your solution.

[Champagne]

I found it:

Poor Man's Mic Setup - SM-57 & Four Elastics

Thanks for that. That is a wild getup with all those rubber bands.

[Champagne]

Update: Chasing the flame of sound...

My bass, the eastman, had a steel tail gut. The tail gut was 1/8". Looking to open it up, I bought a velvet tail gut string and cut the steel one off and replaced it. At the same time I lengthened the overall length by 1/2", strung the bass back up and tonight I was doing some writing so I put the mic back on. First off, the difference the tail gut made was surprising. The bass resonated with a much lower deeper tone. Great, right? Well kind of.

The bass sounds really good with the new tail gut, but this opened up a can of worms for the mic setup. Before the tail gut was replaced, it was much more rigid. Now it is looser and more free to move. This is a problem now with the mic setup on the tail piece. There is a gynomarus rumble every time I hit low notes on the bass. I have to figure out something now. Rolling off below 40hz is an option, but if there is a way I can correct it with greater means of decoupling, which the actual problem is the transference of the tail piece resonance to the capsule and microphone body, I am going to go that direction first and get the sound right from the get go.

Anyway, I had no idea that the tail gut would make such a dramatic difference. I did do a lot of reading about it, but hearing is believing. So much for simplicity.