Re: mic. tones

[Barry Schaede <barrys@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My take on the Astatics is not that they preserve the highs I think they 
roll off the bottom and emphasize the highs at the expense of the 
middle.  They are much lighter than the Shure Green Bullet.  The Astatic 
is a crystal element microphone and is very sensitive to impedance 
loading and mismatch.  I've never tried it but I imagine that the Astatic 
would not work well with a solid state amp or through a board.  The 
engineer at astatic also tells me that a cord length of over 20' won't 
work well with their mikes because the longer cord starts to act like a 
capacitor and changes the impedance load that the crystal sees.  Warning 
the Blues Blaster from Hohner is not an exact copy of the Astatic 
product.  Even thought they are both made by Astatic they have different 
values of volume controls so they don't sound the same.  The other thing 
about crystal mikes is that due to the crystal elements natural variation 
from crystal to crystal no two elements sound the same.  

I play through a Shure Green Bullet most of the time.  It's one of the 
dual impedance models but I cut the low impedance leads and it's now 
wired high impedance only.  I think the highs are just fine.  they 
weren't before I rewired it.  It is heavy and lacks the range of 
expression that the Astatics have butnot by much.  You can drop this mike 
and it will still work.  Don't try that with a crystal.  One of the weak 
points of the Shure is the mike cord attachment.  They always break at 
the spring.  The way I've fixed mine is to drill out the bottom of the 
hole for the mike stand attachment and install a female Switchcraft 1/4 " 
jack and then install another male 1/4" on the old mike cord.

I've also played both Shure SM57's and 58's. They're both excellent 
harmonica microphones.  They can be clean but not to an extreme.  They're 
not fussy about impedance.  They will break if dropped repeatedly but 
they're not nearly as bad as a crystal.  The SM57 is the  instrument 
version of the SM58.  It has a smaller body and is easier for me to 
hold.  I'm told that the guts of the 57 and 58 are virtually identical.  
The 57 being an instrument mike seems to be better suited to playing 
right on top of.  I imagine that if you ever had to sell your mikes these 
two would be the easiest to get rid of.  There are of course other 
choices out there.  The Turners,  the Shure Unidyne series, Americam 
microphone but these are the common choices. For even more info about 
harp mikes than anyone would ever care to know call Tom Ellis at Tom's 
Mic's (his spelling not mine) at 214-328-4217.

The above information is a result of my subjective observations and must 
be construed as opinions.  FJM