Ok, here's #2-
In this case I was taping MMW at a local joint, who were in town for a two night run. This place, like most bars and clubs is not a place where omni's typically work well. The management has put the nix on what was the usual position of choice for stand placement next to the soundboard (I guess that would be SOB?). Fortunately we could set up stage lip. MMW is instrumental so no problem missing FOH vocals, but John Medeski had this fortress of gear stacked around him blocking both sight and sound lines to the entire right half of the stage so everyone taping up there was trying to figure out how best to configure things. Chris Wood (bass) was center stage and Billy Martin's drum kit was sideways facing Medeski with his percussion table behind him. There is a wall at the edge of the stage which is about armpit height from the house floor and about 8" higher than stage level, so the first night I taped my mics to the inside of this wall facing in, centered on the band about 4' apart, with my recorder bag on-stage behind the wall. Totally invisible to the crowd.
Recording turned out OK, not spectacular.
The next day I grabbed two pieces of stainless TIG welding rod before leaving work and taped the leads of the mics to the rods with narrow strips of black gaff tape. At the venue that night I placed my gear behind the stage lip and considered where to better arrange the mics. I figured I'd shoot for a nice clear, present image of Billy's drum kit and percussion table with a direct line of sight to Chris Wood's bass amp and let the obscured keyboard amps (and baby grand at the back corner of the stage) be more atmospheric and diffuse since their level was plenty loud. I shifted left so that the 4' spread between mics was centered on the side-on drum kit, with the percussion table to the immediate left and the bass amp directly in front of my right mic towards the rear of the stage. I bent the rods into a nice gentle curve and taped them to the wall so that they rose about 2-1/2' above the stage and projected about 18" in towards the band and away from the crowd. The result was two thin, black bug antenna-like stalks with the mics on the ends, nearly invisible from the crowd eventhough they were directly in the line of sight from the floor. The recording worked out quite well if a bit unconventional in its sound staging. The percussion table segments are clean & clear on the left, the drum kit is present though unnaturally wide, filling the stage L-R, the basses are centered and the keys are to the right with a nice reverberant ambient depth. Even Medeski is much cleaner sounding than the night before when the mics were closer to him, probably since the mics were up in 'clean air' with nothing around them. Anyway it worked great and I can't wait for another opportunity to try this again.
Apologies for the long winded explanation, here are the pics. First assembling the rods and mics with the gaff tape, no windscreens used-
