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Mics through effects: Can you use effects live without pickups?

jamesshipp 20 July 2009

Hi Folks-

I've been hypothesizing about the following questions for years, and an opportunity is coming up to maybe apply some of my ideas, and I'd love your input.

I have a Musser vibraphone which I'd like to put through some effects. Live. I don't have pickups, and I don't particularly want to spend thousands of dollars to superglue anything to my bars until I've pursued some other avenues first. I have lots of respect for Mario and Alternate Mode, but at the moment I'm not particularly interested in buying or playing a Mallet Kat, which I regard as very cool, but a different instrument altogether.

What I want to do is put my live sound through some effects. I'm aware that my acoustic sound is still going to be present as well, but at this point I don't object at all to the idea of putting out a sound that's a blend of the two. I like the iDEA of old stompbox sounds, but to go with something that doesn't sound as good for nostalgic, anti-digital reasons is hipsterism, I don't want to get into THAT, so please suggest whatever might work.

I was thinking I might try putting mics (that are for effects only) UNDer the instrument, to try to prevent amplifying other instruments and putting THEM through effects. The sound I'd like to go for initially is like a Rhodes piano or Wurlitzer sound: think Ray Charles, or Brazilian cats like Djavan in the 70s. I assume that involves a little bit of distortion and I don't know what else.

Eventually I'd love to look into octave doubling, delays, looping, etc, but right now I just want to figure out if any of this is possible live with mics- I know I can do it in the studio with isolation.

thanks for any thoughts-

JAmes

Comments

John Keene Mon, 07/20/2009 - 14:23

Steve Shapiro has submitted some ideas at this site about his experience with suspending condenser mics under the frame, and he's had a lot of success with that. I've been seriously thinking about the virtues of his setup - for one, you can try it out and return the merchandise the next day if you don't like the way it works. I would wonder to what degree placing transparent isolation planks around the vibes would be required to isolate the vibes sound enough to be able to use effects.

Regarding pickups, it won't be thousands of dollars - I think the K&K systems are now going for around $1100-1300. The downside is that once you glue on the pickups, you can't really return them if you don't like the sound. Plus, you lose the motor effect unless you introduce it artifically, which I tried with my Roland Jazz Chorus amp and it really didn't work to my satisfaction. One nice thing about Musser vibes is that you don't have to physically remove the motor allow space for the pickup rods, so you can still use the motor acoustically.

I'll propose something completely out of the box here. If you have keyboard technique at all, the new Kurzweil PC3-61 has all of the sounds you mentioned at your fingertips plus many other useable sounds, and being able to double on a keyboard may increase your market value as a sideman considerably. It's very lightweight as well. I just bought one (for $1900 plus tax), and it's pretty cool.

jamesshipp Mon, 07/20/2009 - 14:33

Thanks John-

Your insights are always appreciated. I do like playing keyboards, and I think (no offense intended) that if I was really into digital sounds, I'd be inclined to go that way rather than Mallet Kat it. That said, I've developed a lot of techniques and articulations for the vibes as of late that I'm pretty happy with, and one of my motivations here is to see how those techniques sound with effects. I'm not certain how they'd go through pickups, but I suspect there'd be certain things I couldn't do because the pickups wouldn't like them (ie striking the bar right over the pickup with the mallet shaft,) and like I said, it's not a $1500 leap I'm interested in making at the moment.

I'll check out STeve's stuff. Just looking at the instrument, I'm wondering, if you got mics far enough up between the resonators, would it be a good way to both isolate the mics and capture the sound that's coming out of the tops of the resonators?

John Keene Mon, 07/20/2009 - 15:09

Steve will have to comment on this, since he's the pro in this area. Steve recommends the Audio Technica PRO 35 ($140 and you need 2 of them), and another engineer friend of mine recommended the PRO 350 (which is $250 and you need 2 of them). The better mic will probably give you a better cardiod pattern and be more efficient for isolating the effects, but Steve will know better than I would so I defer to whatever his opinion may be.

With Steve's system, phantom power is required, but that's not a big deal as a Samson S-phantom box for $50 will cover that (2 inputs). I think Steve's system appears to be really on target since it is suspended under the frame and therefore would pick up no frame noise and, equally important - no motor noise either. A standard microphone system requires mic stands and more hardware to carry around.

jamesshipp Mon, 07/20/2009 - 15:26

Thanks John-

Tony mentioned on another of Steve's posts ahwile back that you could eliminate frame noise by rolling off the lows... perhaps I can use the same technique to prevent bass bleed... then it's just a matter of setting up in relation to the drums in a way that I minimize bleed there. Honestly, I'm talking about doing this in a pretty dirty Brazilian trio setting, so I don't feel like I need to go after ECM-like isolation and purity of sound.

BTW I REALLY appreciate everyone's advice, but I feel like whenever I bring this up, I get three or four responses that boil down to "sounds like YOU want a malletkat." I don't want a malletkat. I want a way to expand the palette of my acoustic vibraphone. Malletkats are cool, and I could see enjoying one if I had a huge music space and lots of money for equipment. But I'm hauling enough to gigs already, thanks. If I want to use MIDI, I'll take my $120 M-Audio keyboard and put it through a laptop and be done with it.

As for pickups, it may be that that's the only real solution, but my experiences with them have not really been so gratifying thus far, so if I can come up with a less intrusive way, I'd sure prefer that.

JAmes

jamesshipp Tue, 07/21/2009 - 03:03

I really appreciate everyone's thoughts here, and I'm willing to accept that this may just not be meant to be. If it doesn't work, I've still got the motor, and despite the problems of articulations getting swallowed by it, it's a sound I love. Thanks especially to Steve for that long and informative post and to Tony for being patient with all my "but but but..."s.

JAmes

steve yeager Mon, 07/20/2009 - 17:05

james i've tried and owned all things under the sun since the early 80's, early musser magnetic pickups (sucked), k and k, mics and stomp boxes, underneath/overhead

k and k to run effects was by far the best for obvious reasons

there's just to much air around mics and the size of the instrument you are trying to capture to get any real solid effect happening, you'll get effect, but it's very washed and subtle

vibes sound like rhodes with effects, period...there's not that much you're gonna change and you'll probably tire of the sounds soon , phase, chorus, delay, distortion..- that's my experience

tonymiceli Mon, 07/20/2009 - 22:13

i think you have take the nature of sound into consideration. a mics job is to pick up sound. also i think you're looking for something that's just not there. IMHO. if it was really possible to use effects on acoustic vibes in a situation with other instruments around. it would have been done a lot i would think.

maybe you'll do it and won't mind putting effects on the rest of the band.

but even facing away from the drummer, i always say the same thing. if you hear the sound, then then the mic does also.

if you make this work you'll be the first i think. that is unless you use plexi-glass. that can help with separation.

------------------------
Tony Miceli
s k y p e: tjazzvibe
i c h a t: tonymiceli
tony@tonymiceli.com
www.facebook.com/people/Tony-Miceli/604414578
www.myspace.com/tonymicelivibes

tonymiceli Mon, 07/20/2009 - 14:29

there are several thinks with sound that i think get over looked.

first stick your head under the vibes when the band is playing. what do you hear? the band?

people have this false impression about mic bleeding. they try facing the mics certain way and doing this and that. they alwas ask me about mic bleeding when they want to buy the applied mic vibe mics. they say is there any mic bleeding. well of course there is as there would be from any mic. there are ways to cut down on some of the sound, but you can't avoid it.

here's the test, put your mics up on a gig. turn all the other mics into the pa off. have them play and you record it from the pa. then you'll see what you got.

what i think is going to happen is you will be putting effects on the band.

if you want that, get the k and k system, or even better get the mallet kat. problem solved with each of those.

sound bounces off walls and does all sorts of things. the goal is to put mics on your vibes and try and get your sound louder than the other sounds coming through. by a considerable amount. otherwise you're screwed.

sax players get away with it because there levels can be low and they put the bell right over the mic.

my thoughts. sound good?

------------------------
Tony Miceli
s k y p e: tjazzvibe
i c h a t: tonymiceli
tony@tonymiceli.com
www.facebook.com/people/Tony-Miceli/604414578
www.myspace.com/tonymicelivibes

Steve Shapiro Mon, 07/20/2009 - 20:12

Hey James,

I think the previous thread was found below by John...do check out that discussion. Yeah, I have also been experimenting with all these things for years, and tested-out all the options you have described. You can certainly put effects on a mic signal, but it comes with certain drawbacks. Using pickups is a better way to "inject" your sound straight through some processing, but that comes with some different problems (imho). The pickups have a sound of their own, which is usually much more "plunky," since you are bashing on transducers that are glued to the bars. It is somewhat of a less "natural" vibe sound (again imho). So if you want to preserve your acoustic tone, use mics and go from there. As Tony mentions, you should expect pretty serious leakage from overhead mics -- meaning the mics will pickup a lot of ambient sound, and the fx processing will bleed all over everything, creating a pretty lousy output in most cases. If you mic from underneath, you can minimize some of the leakage and isolate the sound a lot better - but there will still be some bleed problems, and potential bad results from using external processing. If you attach anything to the frame to mic from below, then use elastics to hang the mics. If you use stands, just be sure they do not come in contact with the frame.

Now.. the subject of Fender Rhodes is a whole 'nother thing. I have been really interested myself in a relationship between the vibes and the Rhodes. After playing for many years as a 4-mallet vibist with no motor, I started to feel way more comfortable on the instrument if I tried to sort of visualize Joe Sample or Richard Tee when I played. Of course, Victor Feldman is probably the chief cat in this department. If I could play every note just like his Rhodes feel on "Black Cow," I think I would be pretty satisfied. But, a vibe is a vibe, and a Rhodes is different. Even though they both evoke a similar sonic texture, there is a very distinct difference in how the sound is produced. We are percussionists, and a Rhodes is a hammer-type keyboard. The kind of sound you can get by laying into a Rhodes, that "growl," is not really possible on the vibes. So if you grunge up a vibe with a stomp-box, you won't really get that same thing. But if you want to think about "filling up space" the way a Rhodes does, well, that to me is the shit. I find that just the standard vibe motor can do the trick for that kind of washier sound. It gives you a very natural chorusy tremolo. But you could certainly get into some fx, like that little orange MXR box (Phase 90, I think), which is how Donald Fagen does it. I used to use that classic big Roland chorus box long, long ago, and it works pretty well if you do it right. But now I'm not into it - I prefer the natural tremolo.

What I would advise is to basically experiment. Get a semi-decent mixer with some FX sends. Use cardiod condenser mics if possible (which will need some kind of power). Try miking from different positions, tweaking the fx sends and returns, and see how it sounds. Then see how much leakage is happening, and carefully choose your placement on stage as to not pickup other instruments (like drums, that get into everything). I would expect you will get better results in a group where the drummer is not playing too loud, or if you use some plexiglass deflectors or something.

Hope some of this is useful!

Cheers,
Steve

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