Small venue live sound with single condenser mic

[Steve L]

Hi folks. Now and then my session cronies and I get asked to play somewhere where amplification is required. We usually cobble together something with a samll forest of dynamic mics and pickups and small amps. We recently played an outdoor event where I passed by a bluegrass quartet playing around a single mic and couldn't believe how good it seemed to work.

There would be 4 of us who are used to playing together sitting in a semicircle unamplified with vocal, guitar, mando, zouk, tenor banjo and whistles and smallpipes in various combinations. No drums, no bass, no real "breaks" to speak of and it doesn't have to be very loud. The whistler/piper could move his chair back and forth and I think everyone else is savvy enough to play and sing dynamically.

Does anyone here do this with Irish music? I'm thinking of grabbing an Audio Technica 2035 with the $30 ART tube preamp for phantom power and just running that into an old Kelsey mixer with a Kustom power amp and a pair of 12" speaker with horn enclosures up on stands. We could augment with other mics and run some things with pickups through the mixer but I'd love to keep it simple.

Am I kidding myself about this and are is the mic/preamp choice a good one for a low budget? I'm not planning on having monitors. I'd also use the mic for making home demos on an old portastudio.

Any informed input would be reatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

[foldedpath]

It helps that you're not planning to use monitors, but I think you'll need at least two mics, not one. You'll be seated and can't gather closely around the mic like Bluegrass players do. The mobility is what makes it work.

A single mic would have to be too far away to pick up everyone in a cardioid or wide cardioid pattern, without boosting the preamp gain to a level that might trigger feedback (or reveal the noise floor in the system's electronics). An omni or boundary mic would get everyone, but might also pick up reflections from the FOH speakers, nearby walls, ceilings, and floors. With two cardioid pattern mics, you could arrange the band's chairs in a shallow semi-circle with the mics in the middle, each mic angled out 45 degrees to cover two players.

The main concern I'd have is that you mention vocals. Some of the instruments you mention are pretty loud, like smallpipes and tenor banjo. Can your band play with enough dynamic control, so that vocals will be heard without a separate vocal mic?

On the gear mentioned... instead of getting that Presonus tube pre and running it into an old mixer (the mixer doesn't have phantom power?), I'd recommend getting a small compact mixer like the Soundcraft Notepad series that has some basic EQ and effects as well as phantom power. Then you could use two or three mics if needed, and the overall package would still be fairly small.

Good luck with whatever you end up doing!

[Steve L]

Thank you, you've given me a lot to think about.