Re: Crystal Balls Mic

[rocket@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Rick Barker)]

>P.S. - Sorry for all the talk about harp mics... but there aren't any other
>places to get this much good information.  (Kevin sure ain't giving away
>his "secret"... or his mic for that matter.)  :-)

I don't think there's any reason to apologize for mic, amp or electronic
talk on this list. To me, these are important topics to many harp players -
as important as getting a controlled #3 bend. If we're gonna talk about
Little Walter on this list, then there's no reason we can't talk about ways
in which he got his sound. I wish I would have had a source for this info
20 years ago instead of trying to learn it through osmosis. Of course back
then, there was only one book on blues harp(Tony Glover's) instead of a
dozen or more.

I'd also like to tell a litlle story. About 15 years ago, I was having a
rehearsal with the blues/rock band I was in at the time when a friend of
the drummer's showed up with a 1955 Les Paul and wanted to jam. No problem.
It was a beautiful guitar but in his hands it might as well have been a
baseball bat with strings. After awhile, our guitar picked up that Les Paul
and really made that jewell sing.

The moral of the story is that no amount of equipment can circumvent
practice. Someone mentioned this a couple of days ago on the list(sorry I
don't remember who it was to give them credit). The guys that get a great
tone using a Crystal Balls mic are also gonna get a great tone with an SM58
or playing accoustic on the back porch. There may be something(other than
psychological) to these hot rod mics but no matter what, you can't make a
Gremlin look cool(ala Wayne's World).