Re: [Harp-L] Audix Fireball Questions

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks to John Potts for his very informative and comprehensive discussion of the Fireball and Fireball V mics.

I want to comment on one statement:
<Not so good for dirt or distortion (but I have my 545  
<Ultimate for that).

It's true that the Fireball doesn't distort the signal much, and of course this is a design decision.  However, it's also true that in general, you don't necessarily need distortion from everything in the chain that starts with the mic and ends with the amp.  If something else in your chain--the amp or an effects device, for example--is providing plenty of distortion, then absence of distortion from the mic isn't necessarily a problem.  (I say "isn't necessarily a problem" because of course the distortion from a mic sounds different from distortion produced by a tube, and if it's that sound you crave, then your mic had better distort.)  

My videos on Youtube listed at the URL below were all done with a Fireball with V element, and the sound has plenty of grit in it, all supplied by the Digitech RP250/350.  Several of the songs that can be heard on my myspace and Taxi collections were played through a Fireball with V element into an amp modeler, too, such as "In the Night" and "Lever Down (Remix)", and these sounds are plenty hard-edged.  

All that said, John is absolutely correct that you get a harder-edged sound with a 545 than you get with a Fireball.  My point is simply that the Fireball, like any other mic, is one element in the signal chain, there are other ways to introduce distortion into the chain, and at some point the sound is tough enough to work with.  

FYI, I played 3 sets last night with the Jon Paris band at Lucille's Bar & Grille in NYC.  It was a great night, with a lot of heavy players from the NY scene (Joe Cipriano on tenor sax, Joe Berger on guitar, etc.) stopping by to sit in.  (Country Joe McDonald sat in for a couple of tunes, too--there's a blast from the past.)  I used the Fireball mic with V element through my Digitech RP200, and I used some of my more extreme sounds for the first time with this band, like my Blkvib patch that combines a Blackface Fender Twin amp model with a very deep, rapid electronic vibrato.  The band generally raved about the sound of the harp.  Was the harp sound as punchy as it might have been with a 545 mic?  Probably not, but it was plenty punchy enough with this very hard-hitting band.  I would gig with this setup anywhere.

I'm planning to bring my Digitech RP350 to SPAH, and perhaps I'll have an opportunity to play the Fireball through it there, at which point folks can check it out in person.  I've been working a lot lately on patches designed to emulate a traditional blues setup, and I'm pretty sure at this point that I'm getting sounds with the Fireball and RP350 that most players would find very hard to distinguish from a bullet mic through a tube amp.

Thanks, Richard Hunter  

   




author, "Jazz Harp"
latest mp3s and harmonica blog at http://myspace.com/richardhunterharp
more mp3s at http://taxi.com/rhunter
Vids at http://www.youtube.com/user/lightninrick