Topic: Please give your opinions on plan for a recording power trio next week

[easyed]

Loud power trio in a very small club with very crappy old soundboard.  Guitar, drums and bass, permission to tape openly, I can setup before soundcheck begins.

Guitarist on left, drums center, bass right.  The guitarist sometimes sings or otherwise I'd just put a stereo cardioid pair at knee height centered on the lip of the stage, pointed (just inside) the guitarist's amp and bassist's amp (for example if it's a 90 degree angle between mic position, guitar and bass the mics would be at like 80 degrees) and be done with it.

But, I do have a four channel recorder (744T), so my current plan is to augment the stereo pair with one additional channel for vocals (either splitting the vocal mic before it goes to the house or by taking a house feed of just the vocal channel), and then my fourth channel would be an omni clamped to the (very low - I could almost reach up and touch it) ceiling above the front edge of the stage, pointed down approximately at the drummer's chest.  Figuring the single omni will add fuller bass, room and crowd excitement.  And of course I would mix channels three and four with the stereo pair to taste in post.

Cardioids will be either Beyerdynamic MC930s or CK930s, omni would be Busman BSC-1 with omni cap.  I also have a pair of DPA 4061 omnis but it will be simpler for me not to use them.

Stupid plan?  Good plan?  Or some other plan?

Thanks in advance for your replies,
Easy Ed

[Gutbucket]

Good plan.

I'd do it similarly, just slightly differently, which probably reflects differences of personal approach more than than anything-

I'd setup on the on-stage stereo card pair significantly wider, something like ORTF which will be more open and wide sounding and seems to work well on-stage with lots of direct sound even if the room sucks.  Same approach to the vocal probably, the wildcard is the fourth mic- I might put an omni near the kick down low but off to the snare side, mixed to center.  That gets the kick and bass bottom reinforced, centers the whole drum kit, keeps it present sounding and is over on the ever important snare side.

However, my cardioids tend toward clear brightness and benefit from capturing extra bottom like that.  I've never run those Beyers, and think of them as being darker, so if you think you would benefit from additional top end shimmer instead of additional bottom end whump, putting that mic above the kit might be advantageous.  I'd still go wider on the cardioid pair regardless of where you put that 4th mic since you will be mixing that one to up the middle, firming up the center and pulling the imaging towards the middle, meaning that even what might think would ordinarily be too much width on the cardioid pair will likely be fine and offset things from becoming overy center heavy.

Actually, that's what I'll suggest to you because it sounds reasonable! A cardioid stereo pair + vocal feed and extra mic is pretty standard and safe.  What I would actually do these days is put up a three mic stereo array on stage and also take the vocal feed.  Could be three omnis, three cards, three supercards, cards or supers with an omni in the middle, or omnis with a card or super in the middle. That would be wide, open and clear and is actually pretty forgiving with a trio, since you can sort of design the array so each of the three mics points more or less at each of the three sources, with the appropriate stereo bleed between them for a wide but solid image.

I ran three supercards in an equalateral triangle setup for an B-3 organ trio recording session last night based on that, right where I mentioned placing the omni in the suggestion above, plus an ORTF-ish pair about 3' high and a foot or two farther back.  They were doing more of a bluesy-soul-jazz groove than power trio thing but basically a similar deal.  Listening to it right now and it smokes.