Dual Microphones

Matt · Post by **Matt** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 6:25 pm

Ive been watching alot of videos on youtube of bands fromt the late 60's and a lot of them the lead singer will have two micrphones taped together that theyre singing into. Whats the purpose of this setup? Ive seen free do it, as well as led zepplin from their early recordings. Usually it looks like an sm57 with a sm58 or something similar looking.

St August · Post by **St August** » Tue Nov 06, 2007 6:59 pm

I think it was because of the PA set up.. 1 mic for left 1 mic for right..
The intigration of Stereo was still in its infantcey. Everything was mono
at the time. They werent quite sure how to use a Stereo set up..
If you listen to some old recordings from the early to mid 60's
drums on one side and insturments on the other with a ( u-pick-it) side for the vocals..

45auto · Post by **45auto** » Wed Nov 07, 2007 10:09 am

another thing i think some folks were doing is wiring one mic out of phase for feedback reduction. like a humbucker, so i heard...

miguel · Post by **miguel** » Wed Nov 07, 2007 10:43 am

I always assumed the second mic was for live recording, separate mix from the mains.

Myopic Void · Post by **Myopic Void** » Wed Nov 07, 2007 2:52 pm

miguel wrote:I always assumed the second mic was for live recording, separate mix from the mains.

You would be right

You will notice often when they were officially mulitracking the shows early on they sometimes did this..two seperate direct feeds, one for the recording truck parked outside and one for the FOH mixer. It works perfect but it can be aggravating for singers when holding the mic's. Also it is true some bands i.e the dead would exp with two mic's for different types of cancelation/in/out phase sounds etc.

Cheers,

Eric

Matt · Post by **Matt** » Wed Nov 07, 2007 5:25 pm

Cool thanks for the info guys.

Mr Crumb · Post by **Mr Crumb** » Sun Nov 11, 2007 8:59 pm

45auto wrote:another thing i think some folks were doing is wiring one mic out of phase for feedback reduction. like a humbucker, so i heard...

+10 They did this for feedback reduction.

toner · Post by **toner** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 3:04 am

Mr Crumb wrote:
45auto wrote:another thing i think some folks were doing is wiring one mic out of phase for feedback reduction. like a humbucker, so i heard...
+10 They did this for feedback reduction.

Maybe. ? I doubt it though. That's a pretty lame attempt at feedback reduction, even at that time. Reverse-phase mics will cause as many feedback problems as they might prevent in live situations. Anything that reduces gain that has to be restored (as out of phase mics certainly do) won't be of much help.

My guess is that they were either for separate recording or backup purposes.

45auto · Post by **45auto** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 12:13 pm

i'm anything but a dead fan but:

http://cgi.ebay.com/GRATEFUL-DEAD-WALL- ... dZViewItem

Mr Crumb · Post by **Mr Crumb** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 2:02 pm

toner wrote:
Mr Crumb wrote:
45auto wrote:another thing i think some folks were doing is wiring one mic out of phase for feedback reduction. like a humbucker, so i heard...
+10 They did this for feedback reduction.
Maybe. ? I doubt it though. That's a pretty lame attempt at feedback reduction, even at that time. Reverse-phase mics will cause as many feedback problems as they might prevent in live situations. Anything that reduces gain that has to be restored (as out of phase mics certainly do) won't be of much help.

My guess is that they were either for separate recording or backup purposes.

Not if they are located that close together. They would never use a second mic as a second feed because they use a group splitter to send the second feeds. If it were the case that they were sending a second vocal feed to a recording console, they would also need two mics on everything else which would be fed to the recording console.

Stereo vocal feeds are bad practice in live situations, period. And if they wanted to create a live stereo vocal feed, they surely wouldnt use two vocal mics to do it with