I almost always take trains, with a lot of walking and an occasional bus, when I go to shows. As a result, I am always trying to trim excess weight and bulk from my rig. To get wider mic spacing, I was using a Manfrotto 154B, but that thing is the opposite of "light and compact", so I was searching for an alternative. I had pretty much settled on either a followinbob 24" bar or a Grace spacebar, but I was hesitant to deal with the hassle of the international shipping (and associated VAT and import taxes) on the followinbob bar and the expense of the spacebar. As luck would have it, I ran into a friend who does a lot of professional recording (including for NOS and VPRO) and he suggested I take a look at
mic-bar.com. I bought the
basic AB bar and am really pleased with it. Very solid construction and much lighter, and more compact, than the Manfrotto. Robert, the owner, was very quick to respond to my e-mails and shipping was extremely fast and well-packaged. At this point, I have used it "in the field" a couple of times and it works very well. I will almost certainly pick up a second basic AB bar and the ORTF bar, which will give me 120 cm spacing (altogether, this will be the equivalent of
Set 1: AB 120 cm).
During my search, I also came across
this alternative. It is more on a par with the spacebar (and priced accordingly). This one also has a large central piece that mounts on the stand ("Mikrofonbasis mit Kabelabfangsystem"), but the bulk of that was another deterrent for me.
Anyway, I am not sure if this is of interest to most people here (due to shipping from Germany), but I thought I would post it. I searched, but didn't see this anywhere, so apologies if it is already somewhere on the site...