live mic'ing nightmare - including kitchen sink!!

local band weapons of sound played last night as part of some green week thing the union is running. Got to be said this was a definate challenge of mic choice/placement and engineering. Surprisingly musical once the rig was set!

so on bass we have a drainpipe thing played with paddle bats - made up the main melody for most songs such as some clash should i stay or should i go, mission impossible ect. Shure Beta52a on the bottom end, then a sm57 on dinky tabletop stands per pair of the other four tubes. Panned them 25% left to right giving them a stereo image. With a bit of a 60hz boost on the bottom, lomid boost on mid pipes and flat top pipes sounded really phat and punchy with a nice snap of the paddle hits


the 'drum kit' was next to me, a tumble dryer drum bit like a cowbell, some plastic tubs which sounded like two different snares unsprung, real punchy mid sound - shure pg56 used as an overhead. Next to it is a shopping trolley with the rear lifted used as a 'hihat' - akg c1000s


three plastic barrels played with padded beaters as a ... well plastic barrel being banged sound, with rimshots. PG56 for the smaller, and some random kick mic for the bigger


centre stage we have a kitchen sink on some metal sheet stand - sm57 on top, and a breadcrate duct taped onto a traffic cone, different lengths of scaff pipe hung on rope making a chime tuned to the same key as the bass pipes - SM57 underneath. Chap on the far end had a three barrel 'rack of tom toms' with a pg56 over. Guy behind them had the same but with a AKG C1000S. Pair of beta58a on front vox for some singing and mainly shouting.


sad pic of desk, used an LEDJ pack wedged at the left to illuminate the desk, worked pretty nicely. Had a 166xl compressor across the master inserts oon 4:1 ratio just to keep tabs on the dynamics, didnt have enough time to mix the instruments into four groups and compress them individually like id have liked too

Never forget the first time that I worked with the Chieftains---I took one look at some of the strange little Irish instruments that they were playing and thought to myself "how the f-ck am I going to mic that up"---but after getting them to do a bit of a jam session, I soon picked up on the important bits to do----The little guy that sat on the three legged milking stool used to crack me up though---I only had to look at him sat there on stage and I used to have a good old laugh to myself.

Done them a couple of times. The metal stuff makes enough noise by itself to be picked up by pretty much anything in the vicinity, so 57s and condensers where appropriate, but those long pipes do need miking up as you've done. Think I used a load of e604s when I did them.

The best bet in this kind of situation is just to ask the band what works well and go with it (unless it's blatantly ridiculous)!