Numerous performance Harp's, limited budget, $40 microphone? Can you say Penny Wise and dollar foolish?

This is where the Beyer M160 ribbon would truly shine over any condenser microphone. Harps and ribbons are made for each other. That along with something like the MOTU 828 FireWire enabled interface with 4 microphone inputs makes the most sense. A ribbon offers better transient response than any condenser microphone. It would have a lovely full tone, instead of a thin strident one that she would get with a small capsule condenser microphone and/or large capsule condenser microphone.

Plucky broad
Ms. Remy Ann David

Numerous performance Harp's, limited budget, $40 microphone? Can you say Penny Wise and dollar foolish?

Well, I shouldn't have pluralized the concert harp...but still, just one of them costs$15k, so... Yeah, micing it with a $40 mic? She was a little off the money there...pun intended.

However, at this time getting a pair of M160s for $900/pr is out of her current budget... I'm (or rather, she's) looking more for something in the $300/pr range. Times are tough....

Graek wrote: I definitely think some warm, full sounding mics would suit a harp,

The aforementioned advice regarding ribbons and harp would deliver the above request. Cheapy condensors probably will not. The problem with ribbons is that you need more gain than most inexpensive computer interfaces provide (cleanly, anyway).

If the harpist is only looking to record for her own rehearsal and performance evaluation, then the $40 mic solution would fit the bill.

But if she is looking to enter these recordings in competitive circumstances (auditions, grants, etc.) then her money will be better spent on hiring a professional engineer and acoustic space.

Harps love Blumlein. I've had reasonable success with a local harp teacher using a pair of Studio Projects B3 (just a tad over $300 for both.)

Remy suggests ribbons, Zilla supports that, and Recordista suggests Blumlein. I recorded an entire album of harp music using nothing but a Royer SF12 (Blumlein ribbon) in the beautifully live chapel of St Patricks in Manly, Sydney. It sounded great.

But... as Zilla pointed out, ribbons need good clean gain (unless you've got an active ribbon) and, personally, I think Blumlein should be reserved only for situations where the room itself is very good sounding and of considerable size. Putting Blumlein's 360 degree polar response on a single instrument such as the harp means that at least 75% of the information reaching the microphone will be room sound. If it's a small room, you'll get a small recording. If it's a bad sounding room, you'll get a bad recording. If she's recording at home, she's likely to get small and bad recordings...

The reality is that it's an insult to put a $40 mic in front of a $15k harp! It is likely that your harp playing friend is not yet aware of the importance of the right microphone, but no doubt will recognise a bad sound when she hears it. So...

If you really want to help her, make it an educational exercise by taking a few different microphones, with differing polar responses and at different price points, to her house and using them in-situ. Then let her decide. The microphone will be far more important than the interface, so take along any interface you've got that will work with her Macintosh laptop's hardware and software - what's really important is letting your friend hear the different mics and techniques in order to find the preferred combination for *her* harp in *her* room.

Doing anything less than that is not really helping her at all, and falls back on the old and unreliable 'painting by numbers' approach - "this mic and/or technique is always good on harp", etc. It is rarely that simple outside of the concert hall or scoring stage, unfortunately!