Double Bass The Radio Shack mic rebooted

[Tonecraft]

What about instead of a bass cabinet use a PA cabinet on a pole or a bass cabinet elevated to shoulder height or higher?

I play in a 5 piece bluegrass band and for the last two shows, I ran my pickup through my preamp and also wedged an SM57 between the bridge feet and sent both to FOH. I took a wedge monitor and put it on a stand at shoulder/ear level behind me and had my bass amp on a kickback stand fed with just my pickup also behind me, pointed at my head. I requested as much mic in the blend as possible and we played for 3 hours with no feedback issues and the soundguy thought it sounded great. I'm looking forward to using the ATM35 for the next gig to see how it performs. I have a weekly jazz trio gig starting in a month and I think with the aid of the line transformer, I will be able to run completely off the ATM35 through my bass amp since we don't use monitors. I'm learning the trick to using a mic live is - location, location, location.

I have played with the idea of using a QSC K2 powered monitor and using it to replace my cab/head setup but from what I have read, most people prefer a dedicated bass cab.

 

[Tonecraft]

The ATM35 has an XLR output, and the ATR3350 had a TRRS jack, right?

The ATM35 has a mini XLR in and XLR output from the power supply. The ATR3350 I received had a 3.5mm TRS male jack that I had to adapt to run through the amp. I may order another copy of this mic to try again, but I think a better investment for me at this point is to buy a hypercardiod capsule for the ATM35 to improve off axis rejection, hopefully bringing it closer to the DPA4099 in that aspect of performance.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

…

On a side note - don't mind my Zxey Lights unraveling....6 months old and they are already falling apart!!

It’s only the silk that starts to dissolve.
Put some elastic glue on the silk and it won’t happen again. It would even be enough to put the glue on the dark red part near the blank metal part and the string is safe, even if the silks below don’t look nice.

 

[Mandobassman]

The small condenser will not sound good when placed inside an un-plugged f-hole. Yes, the whole top vibrates and produces sound, but the F holes are the only points where the energy captured by the chamber behind the top can escape as acoustic pressure. It all gets funneled thru those openings so they are the point of most concentrated dynamics. If you put a condenser inside that literal wind generator, it's gonna perform badly. Have you ever heard of subwoofer port chuffing? You'd never place a mic THERE. That's a recipe for feedback. For an isolated inside-the-bass sound, with minimal bleed and feeback, the treble F hole is an almost ideal place for a condenser mic - IF AND ONLY IF YOU ELIMINATE THE WIND BY PLUGGING IT.

I would have to disagree with you on this point. That may be true for some (probably many) condensers, but what makes the RS mic work so well is the ability to place it directly in the un-plugged F hole. The RS mic is so inefficient that it really needs to be in the F hole to produce any good sound, and that's what also makes the feedback rejection so good. I had the mic placed directly in the treble F hole and it sounded fantastic. I alway had my amp sitting about a foot behind me. Never had feedback and got tons of compliments about the bass sound. One place in particular that we played monthly had guest musicians come in regularly and several bassists sat in and played my bass. So many questions about what kind of "pickup" I used. They were floored when I told them it was a mic. That RS mic in a un-plugged F hole worked great for me.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

Cheap electret condensers often use small capacitors in the power as apply unit to decouple the FET supply voltage from the signal. That can act as a high pass filter and attenuate low frequencies.
Lavalier mics do that intentionally because they are clipped to the clothing at the breast where the low frequency body radiation is higher than the higher frequency mouth/nose radiation.
So these kind of mics, which won‘t work too well for a listeners distance air recording might work a lot better at positions where the low frequency content is a lot higher than in a signal recorded in a listeners distance.

Even some small diaphragm „normal“ condensers can be a bit weak in the lows (like my Oktava MK-012) due to the limited space in the preamp part of the mic for the big capacitor. But the Oktava works well with the rubber band mounting method through the underlengths pointing to the top between the bridge feet.