Hey you old sound guys...a question...

G

Greg_L

Banned
When I see old live footage from the 60s and 70s, pretty often the singer is using two mics taped together. What's the reasoning for this?

Is it to double the signal over the loud ass amps on stage?
Is one of them reverse-wired to cancel feedback and/or crowd noise?
Is one for recording and one for FOH?

:confused:
 
Greg_L said:
When I see old live footage from the 60s and 70s, pretty often the singer is using two mics taped together. What's the reasoning for this?

Is it to double the signal over the loud ass amps on stage?
Is one of them reverse-wired to cancel feedback and/or crowd noise?
Is one for recording and one for FOH?

:confused:
Click to expand...
Good question. I've wondered myself.. I'll venture
'Is it to double the signal over the loud ass amps on stage?
Not likely
'Is one of them reverse-wired to cancel feedback and/or crowd noise?
I've only noticed the Dead doing that (back when
Last one.. I'd bet most likely

But again, just guessing.
 
A number of folk lore memories come to mind on this one .....

It would make the singer twice as loud having two separate channels.
Or the two would bring out a much full sound pending on the two chosen microphones because of their known pickup quality.

One was a straight dry line, one was for effects or, the two in combo made a slight delay effect.

The noise cancelation via phase swapping was used in sport broadcasting but I'd you notice those microphones were different (more than likely omni) than the ones you'll see in concerts.
Greatful Dead used two microphones for this purpose while they had "The Wall Of Sound" PA being that the whole PA was behind them and they had to suppress the feedback

Early days of stereo mandated it.

Really rich sound guys did it for redundancy and showed off all of the time ... 0_o

Much like the prez ... one is always for a backup.

:D

But in all reality .....

Splitter snakes were not around yet, or someone hadn't heard of them and needed to send a signal to recording land, live shots or monitor world - while the other was to feed the live PA ... to top it all off ... Splitter snakes were very expensive back in the day. And not all that reliable.
 


On both of these the vocal mics are doubled and taped together, but everything else appears to be just regular single miked.
 
Old guy alert. It used to be very common when a recording truck, or outside broadcast truck was at a gig. even though mic splitters were available, it was common for the recording/broadcast people to turn up at the last minute, and few name act's sound people were willing to disconnect something vital and hope the 'visitors' didn't mess around (and vice versa) spun double miking was just easier. Eventually, common sense, and the easier availability of multi-channel mic splitters meant the ugly practice went away. Two mics, by the way doesn't make a system louder - gain before feedback is exactly the same. I did hear stories though of two mics being used taped together, with one with the polarity reversed, and the singer instructed to only sing into one of them, never both. It cuts down spill quite nicely - loud guitars and drums get cancelled out, but the one voice remains. However, tone really sucks!
 
My guess on those films, Greg.
Would be for the recordings. To make sure that the vocals where heard. We don't see where the camera is and they may have been getting an ambient recording of the band with a microphone out there.

Yet the first film may very well have been for the drummers monitors that you see on either side of him ... Those old columns.
 
Most of the time it's a recording feed. They may have been using a distant mic for the overall sound plus spots on vocals to be sure they're captured, as moresound suggests, if drums and amps aren't close miced.

The Dead's wall of sound era mics are a special case. They were standing in front of their PA which of course lead to feedback problems so the engineers came up with the idea of two mics with the polarity inverted on one. You sing into one while the other captures the bleed and mixes it in with the reversed polarity, cancelling the bleed and preventing feedback. I think they experimented with pairs of mics taped together before having custom dual element mics made with matched Bruel & Kjaer condenser capsules.
 
Generally one for live and one for recording/film/video as others have said.

However, I've also heard of it sometimes being done to have one mic straight into the PA and the other via some form of effect(s) since routing options on older mixers were pretty limited.
 
Some early PA gear did not have balanced mic inputs, in fact some of it was HiZ inputs as well. So when they were recording the gig, due to the recording gear being balanced, some with phantom power as well, they could not split the PA channels directly to the recording gear. So the safe way was to keep it separate. Therefore the poor singer had to hold 2 mics taped together.

Alan.
 
Greg_L said:
Check this one. It's just two mics on stands. Starts around 1:12.
Click to expand...


I've always seen the video of this gig in like every who documentary ever, but I've never heard the actual audio! Fraggen awesome! They were heavy and edgy even before their first album.

Listened to Roger on Howard Stern the other night, interesting interview, although Roger's interviews are pretty weak compared to Pete's.
 
Seafroggys said:
I've always seen the video of this gig in like every who documentary ever, but I've never heard the actual audio! Fraggen awesome! They were heavy and edgy even before their first album.

Listened to Roger on Howard Stern the other night, interesting interview, although Roger's interviews are pretty weak compared to Pete's.
Click to expand...

Yeah The Who was like the first big garage "punk" band. They weren't cutesy and tame like some of their brit counterparts.
 
My Generation WAS the first punk song I believe. "Hope I Die before I get old" that attitude fueled the entire punk movement.

But the difference was they became extraordinary musicians and Townshend wrote amazing songs, they were too good to be considered punk.

I love all the early Who stuff, some groundbreaking stuff, but then, they were always breaking ground on every new album.

To me they are the Greatest Rock Band Ever. Beatles, ok better songs, Stones, ok, THE prototype rock band, Led Zep, masters of retweaking the blues. But the who, had all of that, and were a great live visual band too.

The Who # 1
 
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