RE: Racks

["Jonathan Simons" <jsimons2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I hate racks. I have played both harp and lead guitar for a long time ( I
often sing lead, too) and have had all kinds of racks and many rack-like
rigs I have made to avoid neck racks. I have always found neck racks to
provide too little stability,  in the way when I have to sing, providing
too little "back pressure", for lack of a better term, which I assume we
all want so we can really get on the harp for strong tone, and finally,
there is little or no chance of honking out a Little Walter electric tone
with a rack. 

For a while , I used a bullet on a straight stand with a rig I bought from
Kevin's Harps about ten years ago. I can't recall the name of it and
have'nt seen one in catalogs for a while. It consisted of a brass ring
brass ring which goes around the mic ( a shure green fits best but it works
ok on an astatic/Honer) and has fork-like brass clips spaced so the ends of
a typical 10-hole will fit right in and be held nice and firm ( Golden
melody's and suzukie's present a slight problem but manageable. Lee Oskar's
marine bands, etc where the covers end flat on the comb are a better fit).
I'd put my foot on the stand base and Voila! no more chasing the harp
around sounding as sloppy as Bob Dylan on ludes. I even got a halfway
balsey tone by trapping the air/closing off the space between the harp and
mic with all sorts of fabrications. I never was able to make something that
satisfied me as far as the "cupped" Little Walter sound I can get when I
use my hands but I used it for years because I could play sooo much better
with it than with a rack . It was great on acoustic gigs,too. I'd put the
bullet on the mic and a vocal mic on a bracket next to it. It feels a
little like a cross between a trained seal and Jesse Fuller. 

Eventually, I made an even better rig with a "Strnad" harp mic. Now,  the
Strnad seems pretty wackey to me for regular playing . it's a semi-triangle
shaped plastic enclosure that resembles a vacume cleaner attachment you'd
use to vacume your car floor mats with.The back edge of the harp slips in
the long end and so is neatly ensconced inside the plastic chamber which
has a mic element in the end that looks like where the vacume hose should
go. With use of hands, I would hate this thing- none of that cupped feel of
natural playing. However, rigged up to a stand for "hands-free" playing it
provides that tight air trap I could never get with my first rig. The mic
was not my favorite so I eventually cut off the back and put a 57 or 545 in
the hole. Now that was a harp rig!


I'm now playing with a "bluesgrass" band and  as a solo and have a new rig
with an additional feature the mandolin player thought of. I use a boom
stand with a rod (  I used an old curtain rod) extending the boom  to the
floor. This gives the mic/rack even more stability/back pressure. I'm not
using the strnard or a bullet now. I actually use the clamping half(minus
the part that goes around your neck) of a new Honer rack on a bracket
clamped to the boom just below the mic clip for the 58 I'm using for
vocals. It's very new and I'm still working some bugs out but I like being
able to really push hard on the harp without my hands. Hope this is helpful
for my doubling colleagues
.
Jonathan (Doc) Simons
jsimons2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx