Recording live vocals

Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 5:33 am

Hi,

I'm soon going to be recording a band's live performance and rather than recording the vocals through the sound desk, was thinking of using two mics (one for FOH and one straight into the desk), one taped to the other (see Led Zep's Royal Albert Hall DVD or Jimi Hendrix at the Isle Of Wight 1970) and was wondering if anyone had tried this themselves and if so, what the results were. I have decided to use an SM58 for FOH and a Beta 57A for the recording. Can anyone help?

Many thanks!

Smile

Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 6:00 am

Why don't you just get a decent mic splitter like the pro's do? With a 58, there are no phantom power issues to deal with.All you need is a transformer-split "passive" box like the ones that Whirlwind or ProCo make. Nothing fancy.
And as far as those 2 mics taped together, the Dead did that a lot, too. I remember reading that they did that as a way to feed the monitors, not necessarily for recording. What they did was to build a big "noise-cancelling" mic with 2 identical mics that were taped together with the elements right next to each other. Their phase was such that any stage noises that "hit" them would be cancelled, until somebody walked up to the rig and sang into the "top" mic. The "bottom" one would not directly "hear" that voice, so it didn't cancel. This was an early form of feedback control, too.
BTW, the 58 makes a better vocal mic than the Beta57/58 models, regardless of the application, IMHO. It certainly isn't inferior.

Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 6:18 am

Thanks Moonbaby,

I'll give your suggestion some thought.

Cheers.

Smile

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