Close miking with condenser mics

[Brow]

I recommended the baby Bottle, but the Blue Ball is good too :)

Oooooops... and I can't even say I'm getting old. My memory sucks... :lol:

No worries mate :)  8)

[Peterku]

I got insane quotes on shipping for the Ball ($65 and $55, not to mention taxes), so I decided to look elsewhere. The fact that EV has better prices in Hungary than Musician's Friend in the US, finally convinced me. ;)

I bought an ElectroVoice RE510 today. For $175 it was probably a good deal. At the dealer I tried all the models that could've been good for amp micing, within my budget. When I said it'd primarily be for close-miking my amp mostly with clean and moderate gain settings, he strongly recommended me this one. Despite being a condenser mic it can handle up to 146 dB SPL. Great for acoustic, too, he said. The ND468 had a similarly clear voice but didn't have the nice transient response and bass of the RE510. The ND478 was similar but had slightly less bottom end and sparkle than the 468. The Cobalt 4 was a big surprise, for a $40 mic it sounded darn good, not as clear and responsive as the others, though.

The bad thing is that I forgot that neither my sound card or my small Behringer mixer had phantom power. Now I have a great mic but I can't use it. :oops: Most probably I'll get a cheap tube mic preamp made by Presonus or Behringer.

I'll first try the mic at rehearsal this weekend. The dad of our drummer has a nice Dynacord PA. :twisted:

BTW, the History section of the EV catalog says that in 1969 Neil Armstrong spoke his famous words "a small step for a man, a huge step for mankind" using an EV microphone. Not a bad reference... :lol:

[carlaz]

An expensive condenser mic (+$500), imo, is a waste if you're going to be recording at home - you simply don't have a room that can do the mic justice. Worse than this is a cheap condenser mic, tho. Cheap condenser mics sound thin and raspy.

Do you mean this particularly for guitar, or for all purposes like vocals?

The few vocals I've recorded at home were with a cheapo Shure, and though nothing will make my voice sound particularly good, I did find I was having some technical problems with the microphone vibe (it works OK for backing vox in rehearsals and club gigs, but was revealing its limitations more readily on home-studio lead vox).

But I, at least, don't sing as loud as most guitar amps run :) so I have been thinking about a decent (though not bank-breaking) condensor someday (after the BKPs :)) mostly for vocals but perhaps for hand percussion and acoustic string stuff ....

Cheers,
Carl