How Do You Store Your Mics?

I

idoteech

New member
We are in the process of building a small studio in an existing building. I am currently buying more and more mics and rather than buying a stand for each of them and taking up room, I am looking for a safe and effective way to store them. Can you please share how you store your mics?



Also...How do you communicate from the control room to the live room? Mic? I only have an MBox2, so won't I need an extra piece of equipment to plug the mic into to communicate from mic to headsets for those in the live room?

Thanks!
Eva
 
I have my mics in a dresser drawer. Previously I kept them in a foot locker. They're all stored in their zippered pouches and/or boxes.

For communicating to the live room from the control room, I'd look into a control room matrix unit like the Presonus Central Station or Mackie Big Knob. This will allow you to route your outputs from the MBox into the matrix unit, and from there you can take separate feeds to your monitors and to a headphone amp for the musicians. The matrix will have a talkback feature that will allow you to talk to the musicians.

So, that would be (using the Presonus unit for example):

MBox ---> Presonus ---> Control room monitors (from Monitor output) + headphone amps for musicians (from Cue output)
 
i feel bad.

i leave mine on my stands sometimes.

i know this is bad for the mic and the stand...and i do have cases...why oh why does musician and lazy have to be such a strong relationship
 
I use a bunch of those large (like 12x10x10) air tight food storage containers. Everything stays in its respective pouch or case and I make home made desicants out of panty hose I cut maybe a 12" section and tie the ends like a sausage) and silica gel cat litter. (You can find this cat littler most any place... make sure it is pure silica gel with no scent crap in it... every 6 months take it out of the panty hose and microwave it for 5 minutes or so to dry it out again and it will last damn near forever.) Perhaps a bit over board, but I also keep a hydrometer in each and maintain about 20% relative humidity this way.

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showpost.php?p=2142571&postcount=7
 
Mine stay in an EWI mic case, sometimes I leave it in the trunk of my car for days at a time in rain, snow, and 100 degree weather.
 
Mine stay on the stands.

I guess if I had some really expensive mics I'd keep them in the case. But I like having everything ready because setting shit up is a bitch and I'm lazy...
 
Guitar Center sells these "road" cases that are intended to store LP albums for DJ's, I guess, and one was on sale for $25 or so, so I've been using that -- I have them in their zipper pouches, but sometimes I double or triple up similar mics in a single pouch. I keep a few mic cables in there for convenience and partially for padding. I do not have rooms that resemble a studio, and so the only communication is my wife telling me to put away my crap and take out the garbage, and I try not to use the talkback button, because my stuff is too breakable :)
 
depends on how much the mic is worth:D The drum set stays mic'd up cause of the pain in the @ss factor. My nicest mic stays on the stand out of the way and it gets bagged when not in use (I'm a smoker). The rest of them stay in case's. I would put my gt57 in the case but I don't like taking the shock mount on and off. I also have no kids. If I did most mic's would be in the cabinet when hot in use.


F.S.
 
i store mine whenever not in use. i'd say this is probably more important for condenser mics. depending on the kind of headbasket protection they have, dust, moisture, particles of smoke (if you smoke stuff), etc. can all collect on the capsule diaphragm and be difficult to remove. putting a bag over the mic as others suggested is a good idea (i've heard of people using crown royal cloth bags, which sounds like a good idea), but for me i put it away-- a lesson learned from accidentally knocking over stands with microphones on them. particularly now that i have some decent to nice mics...
pistol cases can make good mic cases and can be had pretty cheap off ebay

as for the control room issue, you could get one of those monitor controller unit things with a built in talkback mic like the behringer minimon (like $40) or the mackie big knob (about $300 new). there are others too with different feature sets, but those come to mind as having built-in talkback mics. if you had a mixer and an extra mic lying around you could use it the same way (plug the mic into a preamp channel and the mbox outputs to one of the stereo channels and then run the mixer outputs to your monitors and/or headphone amp). The thing is that either of those units or a mixer would have active circuitry and would impact the sound, so you might want to actually mix with the mbox connected directly to the monitors.
 
Thank you all so much for your replies. I've gotten some really great ideas. I wonder if I just kept them on stands and covered the actual mics with something (most of them have shockmounts and they are a pain)? I'm gonna look into a few things.

Thanks again.

You guys are the greatest!

Eva
 
my mics usually end-up on the ground... among paper debris and tangled wires... and they stay there for weeks (sometimes). I don't treat my mics like bars of gold... More like rugged tools.
 
bubbagump said:
I use a bunch of those large (like 12x10x10) air tight food storage containers. Everything stays in its respective pouch or case and I make home made desicants out of panty hose I cut maybe a 12" section and tie the ends like a sausage) and silica gel cat litter. (You can find this cat littler most any place... make sure it is pure silica gel with no scent crap in it... every 6 months take it out of the panty hose and microwave it for 5 minutes or so to dry it out again and it will last damn near forever.) Perhaps a bit over board, but I also keep a hydrometer in each and maintain about 20% relative humidity this way.

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showpost.php?p=2142571&postcount=7
Click to expand...

+1 for the plastic bags

tom
 
I keep my mics on the mic stand or in a reebok classic shoebox. I dont have the proper casing for most of my mics and havent gotten the motivation to make anything as a substitute. Hopefully my mic's dont rot and foam from the diaphragm. I find that so many of you guys are REALLY meticulous with your gear which is probably a good thing that I don't value enough. You guys are freaks..

or maybe i am.
 
I Hust picked up a case at a garage sale yesterday for $1.00. It looks like a miniture old samsonite plastic suitcase. It's big enough that Ican foam it and store a LDC or two with shock mount on inside of it. So that's the plan stan.

For people who leave thier mics on the stand. A couple things you can do to protect your self is to drop the stand down while not in use to lower the center of gravity and/or if you have a cast bottom stand like an atlas sound or something. Buy a 15 pound old wieght (for wieght lifters) at a garage sale or something and slide it down the the mic stand to the base.

I've got a couple of those old plastic wieghts filled with cement I've been using for years. Allows you to fully extend a boom with a heavy mic on the end with out issue and it makes stands almost impossible to knock over.


F.S.
 
Freudian Slip said:
I've got a couple of those old plastic wieghts filled with cement I've been using for years. Allows you to fully extend a boom with a heavy mic on the end with out issue and it makes stands almost impossible to knock over.


F.S.
Click to expand...


Ha ha I have seen a guy bend a stand by doing that... Can't remember what mic, but the stand was just some cheap one he found somewhere... Ha ha twas funny indeed!
 
If the mics came with hardshell cases, I store them in there. If they didn't, I have some clear rubber maid air tight boxes. I put "pluck-n-chuck" foam inside which make for a secure storage and keeps them from rolling around. Regardless, I put silica packs in all the cases.

As for talk back. I have a Macki Big Knob which has a talk-back push-to-talk button and a built in microphone. I send audio back through the snake system to headphones.
 
notsocoolguy said:
Ha ha I have seen a guy bend a stand by doing that... Can't remember what mic, but the stand was just some cheap one he found somewhere... Ha ha twas funny indeed!
Click to expand...

I rest the wieght on the base of the stand (at floor level) with the main post going up through it. If A guy bent a stand doing that it must have been made of tin foil.

F.S.
 
I wonder if I just kept them on stands and covered the actual mics with something (most of them have shockmounts and they are a pain)?
Click to expand...

a local pro studio i know usually keeps their mics, including a vintage U47, on their stands at all times - covered with plastic bags. some of them get covered with the little purple crown royal bags, but i wouldn't use one of those on a condenser, just in case the linty fuzz stuff inside gets into the capsule.
 
I store my mics in a computer keyboard drawer. That's a metal thingie that is designed to sit ON a desk and your keyboard sits on the slide out tray. You sit your monitor, or whatever, on top, you pull the keyboard out when you want to use it.

For storing mics, I lay a piece of foam down on the keyboard drawer/tray, set the mics on that and slide the drawer closed. It's protected from dust and physical damage, but it's not sealed shut in a plastic bag.

Costs about a dollar used from the local thrift store or goodwill.

Lumpy

You Played on Lawrence Welk?
Yes but no blue notes. Just blue hairs.
 
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