Micing with a bass amp

[christw]

For those interested, here was my process:

I removed the mic holder from the clip and filed off one of the side tabs. I put it in a vice and hit it with a rasp/file. Two minutes and I had it ready to be super glued.



After installing on my bass, I wish I'd put the mic off of the bottom of the clip (as pictured below) rather than ones of the sides for ease of mounting on the f-hole. It worked just fine though.



I soldered on a 1/4" jack and sandwiched the same closed cell rubber foam I use for Portaflex seals between two decent pieces of plastic. I put the foam on both sides of both strings and when you screw down the jack, it holds it nice and tightly. You can see the electrical tape works for me too.

I also used the same foam inside of the clip between the teeth so that it sits on the f hole more securely and slips less.

[Mandobassman]

Nice job. Very similar to how I did mine. The major difference I see is where I taped the battery compartment compared to yours. I taped mine by the wires on either side so that the battery cover was exposed, making battery changing easier. It looks like you have the electrical tape covering the battery cover. Looks like you would have to remove it to change the battery.

Here's a photo of mine.

[christw]

Good point! That's a quick fix I can make.

Oh yeah, I tried it through the B-12XTC briefly and it about doubled my useable volume. I'm convinced a speaker swap, and a tech tuneup with possible 6550 rebias/updrage (Jess Oliver endorsed!) would make it sound as cool and menacing as it looks!

[Steve Boisen]

I went ahead and bought a Radio Shack mic today but I find it's very prone to feedback when placed in or just outside the f-hole. The feedback is the same frequency as my open D string and occurs at anything beyond the lowest volume settings Changes to the EQ on my Gallien Krueger MB150S don't seem to make a difference. It certainly sounded very natural and I wish I could find a way to make it work.

- Steve

[christw]

Originally Posted by Steve Boisen

I went ahead and bought a Radio Shack mic today but I find it's very prone to feedback when placed in or just outside the f-hole. The feedback is the same frequency as my open D string and occurs at anything beyond the lowest volume settings Changes to the EQ on my Gallien Krueger MB150S don't seem to make a difference. I certainly sound very natural and I wish I could find a way to make it work.

- Steve

After replacing the speakers in my B-12XTC allowing me to get some more volume, I found the same thing. I seem to have the worst feedback/resonance on the D at the 5th position of my A string. I'll try EQ'ing it out with my GEB 7 later on today.

[engedi1]

My gig report is not glowing I am afraid. I used it for the whole first set. I noticed that the arco tone was amazing. But the pizz tone was too boomy and there was an odd feedback ringing on certain pitches. For the other 3 sets I used my Erhlund pickup which is sorta like a contact mic that sits on the top of the bass. After the end of the second set I asked our piano player,who sits right in front of my amp, which sounded better, he said the pickup hands down. According to him the pickup sounded more 'real' and mic was just boomy. I was pretty bummed although I was pleased to have found my pickup, which magically reappeared at the same venue I had lost it at 3 weeks prior!
I think what might work well, is using a blender to get some of the air and real tone from the mic, with the higher volume and punch of the Erhlund. I can't see using the mic standalone with my current rig at least. Maybe it sounds great through the board like farmerdude, but through my Aguilar th500 not so great.

[Monte]

I use my Heil PR40 on my H-Clamp. I run it into a 2 channel Mackie mixer and my QSC K10 powered speaker.

However, a few weeks ago I had a Friday-Saturday hit on Beale St with a Saturday afternoon wedding gig in between. The load out on Beale is a PITA, so I decided to leave my speaker and mixer there and do the wedding straight into the mic channel of my electric amp, a Markbass CMD121P. I set it flat, cranked the gain up nearly all the way and gave it a little volume and to my surprise was a really good sounding rig with that amp. I had not thought of trying it because it didn't sound good with my old AKG C3000 that needed phantom power. However, with the dynamic it was good enough I brought it to my gig last weekend because it is less to haul since I can just throw my mic and a mic cable in the pocket of my bass case and leave the backpack that holds my cables and mixer at home.

[DoubleMIDI]

Mounting a mic at or near the f-holes gives a lot of body air volume resonance. So it must sound boomy there.
I used a condenser and an electret under the bridge and very close to the top and even there I needed to dial out some bass (around 100 Hz, about 6 to 12 dB) for a nice sound.

So I think you should reconsider your mic mounting point and reduce the bass a bit.
You might want to mount it on a copper wire temporarily to check out good places for the mic and if you can find a good lace think about a better mounting method.

Cheap microphones often have significant resonant peaks, so that's the point where feedback begins earlier than without or with smaller peaks. They all work and sound more or less good compared to a pickup, it's the feedback resistance that differs mostly when using it live with an amp.

[Ric Vice]

Originally Posted by DoubleMIDI

Mounting a mic at or near the f-holes gives a lot of body air volume resonance. So it must sound boomy there.

The Fishman Bass Blender used a little Crown GLM 100 mini condenser mic. It produced a decent sound placed over the F hole, as I recall, but I never tried it over the top, because I didn't know any better at the time. My guess is that it would have sounded better placed over the top as you suggest. Unfortunately, the little mount they provided wasn't the easiest thing to use.

Originally Posted by DoubleMIDI

I used a condenser and an electret under the bridge and very close to the top and even there I needed to dial out some bass (around 100 Hz, about 6 to 12 dB) for a nice sound.

+1 Since I began using either the ATMSP25B or the DPA 4099B, they sound the best placed between the bridge feet, above the bridge, directly over the top.

Originally Posted by DoubleMIDI

Cheap microphones often have significant resonant peaks, so that's the point where feedback begins earlier than without or with smaller peaks. They all work and sound more or less good compared to a pickup, it's the feedback resistance that differs mostly when using it live with an amp.

That's what really surprised me about that little Crown.
It sounded so much better than either the BP-100 or the Underwood, that I found myself trying to use the mic alone, which would only work on low volume gigs, with a duo or trio. Now I have the Ehrlund pickup and pre amp which solves all those problems with my bass and amp setup.

Ric

[farmerdude]

I have wondered about the "open air" placement as shown in some of the pics here (clipped on).... I have used the mic in similiar fashion and though it did sound nice...and probably better than i the fhole, it would feedback a higher freq when the bass was pointed at the amp.....So...do to lazyness' I just wedge the mic in with foam. This closes the air directly behind the mic and helps with the feedback you are having. For extreme volume I close up the entire f hole with foam. Also, as doublemidi says, consider your mic placement and eq. That said, I have finally found a bass that the mic dident work on- it was a newer plywood that wasnt quite up to par accoustically speaking.......so I appreciate that the mic doesnt work for every bass

[christw]

For what it's worth, I wrote what started out as a joke song because I'm super sick and got told I sound like a country singer last night. I put some quick ideas together and it actually sounded okay so I decided to track some bass to test out the RS mic. All I did was run the RS mic into an M Audio box into Audacity. It's not a very hot signal but it works. (Boosted 17dB to be at level with the music.) All I really did was fifths so and you can hear how much louder certain notes are. That's what we have EQ for though, right?

Link to a sample of that song. Bass kicks in second half of that first verse. It's a bit repetitive overall.

I'll try to toy with mic placement later.

[what the pluck]

Has any one tried this with the rs mic.... I haven't yet, no access to amp or PA till next week. I think this might be my first experiment with it.

[Steve Boisen]

From my experience it's not sensitive enough to work in that location. I don't think you'll pick up enough sound from the bass.

- Steve

[DoubleMIDI]

Strange idea, never tried that.
Since the microphone is more away from the top than most other live amplification microphones, I doubt you get enough sound from the bass to keep the amplification factor low enough (means without running into feedback issues).
Might work for PA amplification only, depending on the sound you get there.

If I ever try this, I would try both wings, since the higher end might reduce the dominant bass a bit.

Please report what you found out.

[donn]

Just now fooling around with my tie clip mic plugged in, when the lady of the house walked in. I kept at it, working on the feedback problem (which naturally gets a lot better if I'm not right at the speaker.) Eventually after a big feedback, she says "are you ... amplified there?" That's kind of an ambiguous testimonial to the naturalness of the sound, but for sure it isn't strikingly different from the acoustic sound (unlike my piezo pickup.)

But I have to confess I'm not going straight to the amp, I'm going through a boost/overdrive pedal - a Cave B-Drive (passive electronics, no batteries.) I think I could get pretty similar results by dialing the trebles back on the amp, but the B-Drive attenuates the trebly stuff in a different way - that buzz where there's a little dip in the fingerboard, creaks and groans, stuff like that really gets picked up with my inexpensive little bass amp, Ampeg B-50R. The Cave pedals are not much like anything else out there, internally, but for all I know a good preamp could do the same thing.

[what the pluck]

It took me a while to be able to try this and report back. Last night I tried the tie clip mic through a pa using my sans amp bass driver as well. In the bridge, in the wings, not real great, like the previous post said, not really enough level there. In the f holes it was better, a bit boomy, like there might of been too much spl for the little mic in the bass. I pulled a but more foam over the mic and it sounded ok. Ideally, again like a previous post mentioned, I think with some sort of attachment with copper wire it wouldn't be difficult to find the sweet spot. I didn't try it with an amp.

I did try it both pizz and arco going directly into a DBX project one pre, into an echo audio fire a/d interface and then directly into cubase and got a very nice natural and full bass sound when recorded which required no post eq.

I still haven't finished experimenting with it and will carry it in my kit to try more but I will also keep my k&k in there as well ..... just in case.

[Mandobassman]

Over the weekend I used my new RS tie clip mic at a large wedding. It was outside in a very large tent. I could not believe how good it sounded. Lots of volume. The amp (GK Baclkine 112) was directly behind me about 3 feet away. No feedback, except when I accidently turned around and faced the mic directly into the amp. I had to unplug for a couple of acoustic songs and when I plugged back in I accidently plugged into the pickup jack instead of the mic jack. I couldn't believe how horrible it sounded in comparison to the $32 mic. I'm loving this setup.

[cultrvultr]

Alright, after reading this whole thread I picked this thing up at Radioshack. looking forward to trying it out this week.

[Samuel Liu]

Great review. I wanna try it in my doublebass.

What is the brand name?

Because RS do not ship overseas, here I found one at Ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/130642489336...84.m1438.l2648

Is it the same one?

[Dr. Jake]

I've also begun experimenting with the Radio Shack tie clip mic and gotten good enough results in the practice room to think about trying it out on a gig.

Placing the mic inside the f-hole yielded little other than feedback, but when I tried wrapping the mic in a towel and positioning it between the bridge feet I got a beautiful, clean sound and plenty of volume before feedback set in. Moving the mic-in-towel to the tailpiece increased the bass response, but still gave a very useable sound.

It's entirely possible that I may not be able to get similar results in the real world. At this point, though, I'm bemused if not a little irritated that a $32 tie clip mic produces better results than the $400 Gage Soundclip I tried last week.