Double Bass Mixing Mics

[jthisdell]

Not sure if I should post this under BG Live Sound but thought I would try over here first.

I play in a Bluegrass trio, normal set up is three vocal Mics, acoustic guitar, banjo and fiddle with pickups, my bass w pickup thru pre into amp. Pretty easy set up. If we are at a larger venue I will run my di into foh. Mostly we run PA from stage. We have several set ups but most often we use a Bose L1 system for monitor which runs well with no feedback. We don't play electric guitars and drum loud but we are not a quiet traditional bluegrass band singing around one mic either.

Problem comes when we have other players sit in with us who do not have pickups in their fiddles, mandolins, etc. We use Shure sm 58 for vocals. Have a few odd condescor Mics but when we have tried these for the instruments we run into a lot of feedback. The sm58's work better for the instruments but not great.

I was wondering if using a Shure sm57 or 57a for the instruments would work better. I know mixing vocal Mics tends to cause problems and Any ideas or experience with this? Traditionalists may not approve but it sure is easier to get good sound with everything having pic ups and only using Mics on vocals.

 

[Ric Vice]

Not sure if I should post this under BG Live Sound but thought I would try over here first.

I play in a Bluegrass trio, normal set up is three vocal Mics, acoustic guitar, banjo and fiddle with pickups, my bass w pickup thru pre into amp. Pretty easy set up. If we are at a larger venue I will run my di into foh. Mostly we run PA from stage. We have several set ups but most often we use a Bose L1 system for monitor which runs well with no feedback. We don't play electric guitars and drum loud but we are not a quiet traditional bluegrass band singing around one mic either.

Problem comes when we have other players sit in with us who do not have pickups in their fiddles, mandolins, etc. We use Shure sm 58 for vocals. Have a few odd condescor Mics but when we have tried these for the instruments we run into a lot of feedback. The sm58's work better for the instruments but not great.

I was wondering if using a Shure sm57 or 57a for the instruments would work better. I know mixing vocal Mics tends to cause problems and Any ideas or experience with this? Traditionalists may not approve but it sure is easier to get good sound with everything having pic ups and only using Mics on vocals.

JTD,
Well sometimes, less is more with microphones, I have a DPA 4099B (minature shotgun condenser) that works quite well, but even as good as it is, it has a volume threshold that you can't exceed. Lots of players have had very
good results with the Troll ribbon microphone, so you might consider one of those. It's pretty reasonable and attaches to your bridge with two rubberbands. Troll Microphone — Ribbon microphone for upright bass
The SM 57 tends to woork well because it isn't as hot as a condenser. So if you're not looking to change out your setup. It's the cheapest way to provide a mic for other bassists to play into.

Ric

 

[DoubleMIDI]

The SM 57 tends to woork well because it isn't as hot as a condenser.

It's not a question of a hot or less hot microphone. This will be compensated by electronic amplification, so the mic air to speaker air ratio will be the same.

It's more a question of which frequencies in the amplification mix have an amplification peak. And of course also how the relative position and room resonances will add peaks in the frequency spectrum.
The microphones with worse feedback often have relatively sharp peaks in their transducing frequency spectrum that lead to feedback at those frequencies.
Dynamic microphones transduce higher frequencies less good than condensers and a lot of cheaper condensers have peaks in the higher frequencies that lead to unpleasant feedback in that range.