Re: [Harp-L] Performance setup - hearing and feedback

[pdxharpdog@xxxxxxxxxxx]

great thread. In my band I have struggled with hearing myself over the loud guitar and drums. We play mostly venues with few monitors or monitors with only one mix for the whole band, so if band mates don't want to hear as much harp in their monitors as you need to hear yourself, then that's a problem. 

I've resorted to using my amp as a stage monitor with a line out or mic'd through the PA for house sound, and this seems to work pretty well. I raise it up on a milk crate pointed towards me as much as possible and this allows me to hear it from behind better than just having it sitting on the floor. I also use a Greg Heumann Ultimate 57 mic and don't have much if any feedback issues. This is really a great mic - I've tried bullets and other so called harp mics, but to my ear, the Ultimate 57 is the best of all harp sound worlds. Some FX pedals have gain knob and volume knobs as well as EQ sliders to help with feedback. The Lone Wolf Tone+ pedal has really been a great thing for me as I play lower keyed harps alot and need a hi boost to help cut through the lower frequencies these harps produce. 

Maybe my old mature ears have lost some of their ability to hear lower frequencies, but I find myself turning up the mids and highs more than the lows these days. All in all, it is a blend of the musicians, their instruments and their amplification, consideration for band mates needs, house sound capabilities and your own equipment that all work together to provide the audience and the musicians the best experience. 

no affiliation with lone wolf or blowsmeaway productions. just a happy customer. 

Ross Macdonald 
www.sassparillapdx.com 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joel B. Chappell" <joel.b.chappell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: Harp-L@xxxxxxxxxx 
Cc: "John F. Potts" <hvyj@xxxxxxx> 
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2011 10:48:01 AM 
Subject: RE: [Harp-L] Performance setup - hearing and feedback 

Greetings from the old friendly electronic engineer again. There is a great 
deal of wisdom and knowledge in the first two paragraphs that John Potts 
wrote. If you can't hear yourself get a good floor monitor and keep the 
house speakers down. 

As memory prevails most bullet mics designed some 75 years ago were never 
intended for musical/broadcast/entertainment application. Primarily they 
were intended for public address/paging operations along with some use in 
radio communications... thus they were intended for single mic applications 
located a good distance from output speaker, thus feedback was just not a 
problem. Their design is omni-directional as most hi-Z mics are, and they 
have no anti-feedback qualities designed in. They are a very archaic design. 
The only reason I can see in justifying their use on stage with a harp is 
that they are easier to hold close to the harp than most modern 
uni-directional mics. They also have some mystique due to their antique 
radio 1930's appearance. They certainly are not music quality devices and 
due to their omni-directional qualities are not feedback friendly, There are 
thousands of mics on the market that are much more suitable for amplifying a 
harp. I have been using mics and designing them into systems for over 60 
years and "bullet mics" would be my last choice for any application. Bottom 
line = you are far better off using a classic Sure SM57 with a mixer that 
has some anti-feedback circuitry. Do not run a mic through a guitar amp and 
be sure to observe the 3 by 1 rule in mic placement. Follow all the other 
rules and practices that prevent a system from "boiling over" with 
feedback...like keeping the house amps down. 

Joel B. Chappell 
Milford, NH 03055 

John F. Potts wrote: 

There is a well known harp player (I forget who) who has said that if 
you can hear yourself when you are comping you are playing too loud. 
When playing in an electric/amplified environment you've just got to 
accept that there will be occasions when hearing yourself may be a 
problem. Often bands that play too loud get too loud because one of 
the musicians can't hear himself well enough, so he turns up, then 
another musician turns up, and so on, until the whole band is too 
damn loud. 

I'm not a fan of bullet mics for a number of reasons, one of which is 
that many of the more popular commercially available bullets are 
feedback prone. A fairly reliable method for controlling feedback in 
a live performance situation is to use a mic with a volume control, 
set the amp's volume at the "sweet spot" (which may be pretty high) 
and backing off the volume on the mic itself to set performance level 
volume. This reduces the output gain so that the mic is not as hot 
and will usually control feedback while allowing the player to get 
good tone from the amp. 

The tone of some mics will degrade if the mic volume is turned down, 
but many (like Greg Heumann's Ultimate series mics) sound just fine 
used this way. Some amps are just too high gain for the method I 
have described to work well for controlling feedback, in which case 
the player needs to swap out preamp tubes. If your mic doesn't have 
a VC another way to accomplish output signal gain reduction is to use 
an MXR 10 band EQ pedal which has gain and volume controls and use 
those to reduce how "hot" the output signal from the mic is. Of 
course, you can also use the EQ freq sliders to notch out the freqs 
that are feeding back. But the gain and volume sliders are actually 
more useful than the EQ adjustments. 

Personally, I am not a fan of harp specific amps and I don't like 
what the Kinder AFB+ does to my tone. But, depending on what kind of 
tone you are after, some bass amps can sound very decent for harp and 
are less feedback prone than many guitar amps. But if you are after 
a "crunchy" or distorted Chicago type tone, a bass amp is not going 
to give you that. 

Hope this helps. 

JP