Mics Attached To Wrists?

[Jim Besser]

I was talking to the sound man the other night as he was setting me up with my borrowed Microvox system, and he was telling me about a traveling act he worked with recently (sorry, don't remember who it was).

 

One of musicians was playing a very small melodeon, and he came equipped with two small clip-on mics like the ones a lot of fiddlers use -- velcroed to his wrists.

 

The sound guy said they worked great; the only disadvantage was that this system required two channels.

 

Has anybody tried this? Advantages/disadvantages?

[Alan Day]

The advantages of clip on mikes is that you have freedom of movement,providing the cable is long enough.The disadvantage of any attached mike on the wrist ,on the instrument taped on the back of the hand is that some reeds will sound louder than others.Attached mikes on a concertina reeds sound loud near to the mike and faint away from it.If you have the mikes on stalks about six to twelve inches away they work better, but are awkward to play and I did not like them.I found two mikes at about 18 inches away from each end to cancel any extension of the bellows works best for me and I get even sound from all reeds.

Al

[wes williams]

Has anybody tried this? Advantages/disadvantages?

... and you can't use any of the concertina 'phasing' effects. 'The Bells' would definitely have to be left out of your repertoire

[Lawrence Reeves]

With an anglo I don't see any phasing issues possible. On an English system I suppose it could be possible.

These close mic aplications are usually good because they pick up a sound very close to the source, and reject back side information. I think that the technical description is hyper cardioid. A few example of this type of microphone can be found on websites by AKG, Sennheiser, Audio Technica, and Shure. The main reason I went to this system of microphone was to help eliminate feedback. If you take two exact microphones and place them on each side of the concetina, spend time with level and phasing you can capture a near perfect sound. Monitors change the story, feedback at higher volume is very common. Again these are my opinions, and I strongly encourage others to chime in.

[cnrobinson]

I've tried several systems over the years. First off I used tie-clip electret mics, (dead cheap), using a 2-1 adaptor (also cheap!). I attached these to the thumb straps of my English and to the hand straps of my freinds anglo. They worked a treat except that the thin wires tended to get caught under chairs etc and stopped working. Also the deaf-aid batteries used to run out, I always had to carry spares. On the plus side they also worked fine on fiddles, guitars etc.

 

We tried them on our wrists but they were too far away from the business end of the 'tinas to work efficiently. I suppose melodeons are slightly different.

 

We also tried conventional mics on mic stands but there you could deffinately tell when you were pushing or pulling by the volume. We never found a difference with the tie-clips over the span of the notes (ie that soe where nearer to the mic than others) as the distance seemed to be within the range of the mics, if you see what I mean.

 

In the end I ended up with two AKG modified electrets using an AKG pre-amp (in one pocket) and a Nady true diversity radio system (in the other) as this eliminated the problem of the damaged wires!

 

Chris