I just finished another series of performances with my choir, and realize it's long past time to give my students some PA reinforcement. Some background:
This is an elementary school choir which ranges from 50-90 voices. The big problem is they perform on a tiny stage barely large enough to hold the 4 sections of choir risers, which is in a school gym and then that extends to a cafeteria when we open the retractable wall for performances. (This is your typical cafe-gym-a-torium found in schools built in the 1960s.) My students put out a good deal of sound, but it is just getting lost in the lack of acoustics.
A colleague who teaches choir in another building but performs in mine recently consulted the tech guys in our district, who had her buy a pair of NT5s, two boom stands, and a cheap 8-channel Mackie mixer to have a portable setup that connects to the stage PA systems in the schools where her choir performs. This works well, but I want something more compact.
We have a very good recently-installed PA system that has a 1/8" stereo input and single XLR line level input.
What I want to do is make a low-cost version of the Audix Micro-Boom - a low-profile and portable set of choir reinforcement mics. I am thinking a simple pair of AT853s used for their original application of choir PA, but not hanging them (not feasible here). I would make my own boom arms out of standard mic stand bases and
these carbon fiber tubes I already use for my DPA 4041 setup. Instead of the AT power modules, I would use my FP24 as power source and mixer. It runs great from battery power, already has low cut, 1/8" and XLR outs, and more gain than I could ever need. Or, if I don't want to use any of my personal equipment and have my school buy everything, I could go with a cheap micro mixer like the Mackie 402.
The trick would be finding 853s
without the 4.7k mod, terminated to XLR and without the inline phantom supply.
Sound Professionals has them, but only with short cable lengths.
Does this sound like a good plan?