Dam this hobby and its bloodsucking ways. I caught the bug after taping the cowboy junkies last week, so now i am looking into an open rig(already ordered the clamping setup), i was looking at some AKG C 451 B's, they seem like they are a pretty decent mic for the price and have good range for a lot of situations. but honestly have no clue what comes next, including cables and pre which will run into a ihp or similar compact recorder(no all in one for now), can someone tell me what cables i need and what cost effective pre i could use into the ihp. thanks
Welcome to our world!
First off, nice mics. You'll be happy with those and they are darn nice sounding mics for your entry level situation.
If you're dead set against all-in-one, then I'd recommend a UA-5 which will give you a damn nice pre-amp at a nice price point. The modded UA-5's hold their own sound-wise against the best. An Oade or Busman mod should run in the $300 - $350 range. If you aren't in for that much, then get a digi-modded UA-5 for around $170 - $200. These are powered remotely using a 9V battery. The 9V Li-Ion battery (the so-called Wally World battery since so many people used to find them at Wal-Mart, but I don't think they're on the shelf anymore) which you can still find on ebay I think for maybe $30 or $40, or less used. Beware used Li-ions though to make sure they aren't depleted. Good Li-Ions run the UA-5 and provide phantom power to your mics for something like 4 hours...plenty for your average show. Or something like a power-runner with selectable output voltage would be even better and give you hours and hours of power. Any battery supplier on the web should have a variety of options that are acceptable. You'll need to make sure you have a cable to connect between the battery and the UA-5...and that the cable is equipped with the right tips.
***Make sure you switch polarity on the tip too, because the UA-5 polarity is opposite of most devices. You may need to make a cable that connects the battery to the UA-5. If your battery comes with one of thoes Radio shack tips, all you need to do is swap the tip around to get polarity right. If you have a hard wire, you need to cut the wire and swap leads...snip the wires one at a time though to avoid shorting the battery and ruining it. ***
For starter cables, you'd just need a set of XLR...maybe right angle on the mic end and straight or RA on the pre-amp end. Cables with Mogami or Canare wire should run you $40 or so...buy about a 12 to 15 foot length so that you'll have enough length to extend to the top of your mic stand. Lots of people on our list prefer silver clad cable which have a sligthly brighter sound (although some people can't hear the difference; probably depends on your playback system). I think there are lots of these listed on the Yard Sale right now in the $100 range.
I'm not sure what your recorder's line-in has, but there are a variety of options for going from the UA-5 to your recorder. You'll have to figure that out, but the most popular is to use the optical out on the UA-5 if by chance you have an optical connection on your recorder.
Then all you need is something to carry it all in...I found that a rackgear backpack with built-in collapsible shelves is handy for the UA-5.
Having said this, you really should consider an all-in-one solution such as a PMD-660 because you'll probably find yourself going this way sooner than later anyway. It's probably only $200 difference in the end and you end up carrying just the mics, cable and recorder. Simple. Set-up is less time, less chance for errors in recording, etc.
But the bottom line is that, if our experience is any indication, you'll probably be in all-in-one-land sooner than later anyway, so why not skip the frustration and the learning curve and jump straight in?
Powering the 660 is cake...just 4 AA rechargeables and you have 4 hours plus.
Another of the negatives of the entry level pre-amps which you'll fast become frustrated with is that there are no level monitors...only an idiot light to indicate if you're peaking and some preamps don't even have that. On the UA-5, you can monitor levels with headphones, but that's clunky during a show and from my own experience, you often don't catch peaking until it's too late simply because the idiot light is easy to miss (so I usually ran with plenty of headroom, but that kinda sucks too because then the resulting sound wasn't quite as good as if you were running kinda hot) Anyway, it's so much nicer to just have level meters to watch, so much easier to dial in your levels dead-nuts and so much easier to just gently tweek things during a show without kinda making a step level change. Finally, you have a much higher confidence level during the show that your pulling a good sounding recording instead of kinda hoping. To avoid all this, some people that use a UA-5 have bought an in-line level meter....what's it called...an SBM-1 I think. I think these are hard to find though and run around $80 used. I have no idea how they hook up.
Regardless of your decision, the above will get you going.
Have fun!
Topic: Never thought I would ask... But what to get for open taping? (Read 2281 times)