Guitarfreak wrote: I was watching stand up comedy on television the other night and something hit me. The comic was waving the mic all around and using the mic at all distances from his mouth. The thing that caught me off guard was that there wasn't much difference in sound as he did this.

Which leads me to believe that maybe he had a wireless lav, and that the SM58 in his hand could have been just a prop? I don't know if anybody here has ever done this kind of thing, but it did pique my interest nonetheless.

Could be, but with stand up on TV there is usually no monitor or at worst an in-ear. You can compress the sound pretty well and then compress it again in post processing.

It's not unusual to use both body packs & handheld. SNL utilizes both RF & boom operated shotgun microphones. Late-night talk show hosts all use wireless LAV's along with those lovely Neumann TLM 170 & TLM103's right there in front of them on their desks. Sitting there more for props & backup than primary. Many comedians manipulate microphones for their sound effect purposes and utilize them in an atypical manner. So they only want that for their sound effects not their spoken word.

Don't let it worry you. They don't
Ms. Remy Ann David