Easy, cheap mic for acoustic?

[Brewerpaul]

The title and description says it all. I played my Fullerton
Gloucester at a session the other night and had a hard time hearing myself. Is there any cheap,quick, non-traumatic way to temporarily mic my F style so I can play it through an ear bud? What type of battery amp?

[mandroid]

Microphones for acoustics is really better brought up in Equipment section.
there you will find many prior posts on what others have done.

some , lavalier, clip on to the speaking person, microphones are made, and pretty cheap,
foam cover and stuff in a soundhole,
then you need an amp/mixer too


But, one approach, a budget but proper mic setup.

Behringer makes a battery powered passive mixer,
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product....=631257
(you can record off of it too to learn jam tunes better away from the jam)
And a internal battery powered small Diaphragm condenser mic.
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product....=277522

a mic-stand and plug earbuds into the mixer headphone jack.
all useful stuff, run off flashlight battery

Another, a buskers Amp.
Crate Taxi, charger and internal battery
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product....=487631
headphone cuts out speaker usually,
[its so with my Roland AC60]

Or a doctors stethoscope, perhaps?

loud Banjo-mandolin will do it too .

I like 4 string banjo mandolins, double the Irish Tenor an
octave up.


more traumatic , but you are a woodworker , cut a sound hole in the top rim, facing you,
several examples of them built that way . nice ones, in past pictures.

drill a line of holes (another F hole?) and sand the edge smooth
add some touch up finish and you're good to go.

[UKSam]

Not necessarily the easiest or cheapest, but you could get a stick on/suction piezo bug to fit on the mandolin, then run the output through an acoustic multieffects.

I have a Zoom 504 acoustic pedal and plug various instruments into it for monitoring. #Its got a headphones out (via a built-in preamp). Not sure if you need an actively pre-amped signal tho. Come to think of it, you may do - so you may have to spend a bit more for a clip-on active pickup.

If you're feeling brave you could add some reverb and delay and snigger to yourself that you sound much better than everyone else.

[flatback8]

This may or may not be applicable to what you're planning - but here goes ...

I was just about to put my old "Tram" lapel mic (Lavalier) onto eBay when I suddenly thought "Duurhhh! Stupid!" I can use it inside the nice acoustic I've got, for some acousticy-session stuff, rather than the Fishman pickup on my other mando, which is fine for electric bands but loses the fun-quality when just amplifying it for an acoustic sound!

All I've got to do now is to work out how to make like a goose-neck, feed the Lavalier inside and fix the contraption to the mando ...