Wired for Song

Well it’s a sad fact of life but there isn’t much call for a solo electric guitar act. The business we are in is songs, and for that you need a singer, for most of us performing means microphones and amplification. If you are new to this it can be a problem. This article should help you out

Choosing a Microphone

Mic’s for live work are different from other mic’s. You need to buy one suited to the job. They need to sound good of course but stage mic’s need to be robust and to have good feedback rejection. In practice this means they must have tight directional control and be designed to be close to the singers mouth without overloading. They must also be insulated internally from handling noise. Finally they need to avoid having any frequency resonances, peaks where they are more sensitive. This will cause feedback or howlround which can ruin your set.

This means that cheap Karaoke mic's won’t really cut it and you need to spend a little more on something designed for the job. By and large you are looking for a ‘dynamic’ mic (which are generally more robust) with a cardioid pick up pattern. Cardioid mic’s picks up sound mainly from in front and a bit from lobes at the side but almost no sound from behind. Super and hyper cardioids are less sensitive from the sides but pick up a little from behind. You need to know which you have because your monitors go where the sound is least likely to be picked up, behind a cardioid and 45 degrees to the side of a super cardioid. There’s some graphs of the pickup patterns here http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/microphones/directional-characteristics.html

I’d compare the SM58 with a Fender Strat, it’s a good mic with its own sound and it does what it does well. No-one will say you got it wrong if you buy one but there are other choices, and cheaper. Just like the Strat there are plenty of clones and barely disguised copies out there, and a lot of fakes too. Beware, there’s a lot of stuff that looks better than it sounds, cheap mic’s in a SM58 shaped case.

I’d advise you to budget about £100 for a mic. Sadly people are going to judge you much more on your vocal sound than your guitar tone so, if you’ve paid £500 for your guitar and the same for your amp then you are crazy to let yourself down with a £20 mic. A bit more will buy the microphone equivalent of a made in USA Fender. If you really are strapped for cash though the Samson Q6 and the Behringer XM8500 are two mic’s I’ve tried which are almost ‘industry standard’ and cost about £25 with a lead. They’ll also do for instrument mic’s/backing vocals when you upgrade. Crucially they both reject feedback slightly better than the Shure and the XM8500 has lower handling noise, so they won’t create the problems other cheap mic’s do. There may be other good clones, but I haven’t used them. Remember too that some mic’s suit some voices more than others so try them out if you can.

Balanced V’s Unbalanced

Mic’s have very low output signals and low impedance which means they don’t easily send their signal down a long lead. Mic’s should have 3pin XLR connectors leading to a balanced cable with two conductors and a central earth. The point of this arrangement is that it gives you the best quality sound and cuts down on electrical noises. A mic with just a jack is almost always poor quality. You can get a jack to XLR lead if your amp won’t accept an XLR but you lose quality and gain noise. A better arrangement is to use a matching transformer at the amp end. http://www.maplin.co.uk/microphone-transformer-xlr-to-1-4-mono-plug-12151

Amplifying the Sound

Hopefully you can now go in and choose a mic to suit your needs, my next article will be about choosing the amplification to go with it.