Microphone upside down??

Dot said:
I almost always use large condenser mic upside down. Primarily to keep the mic, stand, and cable out of the way of the singer.
Click to expand...

right on. :D

plus, the comments about the old, vintage tube mics damaging/melting the diaphragms are correct--some of those mics would get a bit warm if you left them on the stand and plugged in for a number of hours. an hour to warm up, a couple hours to do some coke, and then maybe 30 minutes to lay down a track. :p

and whether it's "right" or not, i've found that by aiming the diaphragm down, you emphasize the "chest voice" in the singer as opposed to the nasally "head voice". plus, having them "look up" helps the singer see the chart on the music stand as it's in the line of sight.

the other benefit is that the "inexperienced" folks that come into my studio see it upside down and they identify it with "professional", as that's what they've always seen in pictures/on TV.

and as an aside, the V67 is *great* for that illusion of "professional"....i can't begin to tell you the number of people who've seen that gold basket and thought it was a "really high dollar mic". and some of them request it ("can i sing through that gold mic again?"). if that's what they want to think, then who am i to dispel the myth? it's amazing what the thought of "pro" will do for an artist's confidence and inspiration (and thus performance).......


cheers,
wade
 
Upside-down is cool!
Peluso2247.jpg
 
junplugged said:
the info that came w/ my tube mic said to use it inverted to prevent the heat going to the cap.

and 'opening up' vocals with head up is wrong. My chorus teacher always said that by stretching the neck and head up closes down the wind pipe. to open it the to max the head should be straight or lower a bit. just try it say, 'aaaaah' and move your head up and down, your tone quality opens up and gets deeper as the head moves to straight on and then lower, the air way gets squeezed down as the head moves up. watch 5 minutes of opera, not one of them sticks their head up. And they go for maximum power, don't ya think they'd all have their heads angled up if it was the way to sing?
Click to expand...


I was a concert choir vocalist for 8 years and my instructor always taught "chin up", always. His choirs were awarded perfect ratings in Ohio 18 consecutive years so I'm guessing he knew what he was talking about. I personally was a baritone and often had to stretch into the tenor range, having my "chin up" made it considerably easier to get more powerful and clear high notes. You're thinking isn't completely wrong but telling everyone on here that the head up theory is wrong, well, is just wrong. For lower bassier notes expanding your chest and lowering the chin slightly, does help achieve the note easier but also can give you a lower volume. Now IMO none of this really applies to most people because most singers that aren't doing something in a choir or small groups sing lead which is primarily right in the middle of your range. Hope I didn't babble too much but angling the head up can achieve a better vocal sound, and hangin the mic upside down looks cool.
 
Vis a vis...

... it also has to do with making a vocalist hyper-extending the neck a little bit "up" toward a mic.

Sorry to be so prosaic, but back when I was in radio we used to hang the mics slightly "above" in order to...





Allow one's spit, drool, whatever to run down the throat instead of having it collect in one's mouth...
 
Head up or head down has more to do with the direction in which you are projecting than the quality of your voice. Ideally your vocal chords are more likely to be relaxed (as they should be) if your head is racing straight ahead and neither up nor down. Either extreme will require some neck muscles to be extended and others to be flexed, which is exactly the opposite of what is most desirable.

The most important thing to remember when singing in any style is that the vocal chords will deliver their peak power and range when in a completely relaxed state; that is, when no stresses are on them other than that of the voice itself. That is why vocalists study methods to stretch the vocal chords like stretching a muscle before a run - and to return it to its relaxed state. Its also why when your neck or jaw begins to cramp up or feel tired, you lose range immediately. Watch professionals singing opera sometime. it looks as if they're about to drool at times because they intentionally keep their mouth and jaws as loose as possible. It might look funny but the voice it enables is powerful as hell.
 
PhilGood said:
I own quite a few tube mics and I'll say that heat has nothing to do with it. The purpose for hanging mics upside down came from when singers needed to have the charts on a stand to read while singing. None of my tube mics get hot enough to effect the capsule.

If heat was an issue, why would you see a solid state mics like a U87 upsidedown (which you see quite frequently)? It gets the singer's vocal chords in a better ergonomic position and allows for music stands and hand gestures, which some performers use to enhance their performance.

I think its more of a trend.
Click to expand...

Yo Philgood! Do any of your tube mics have a PVC diaphragm? I doubt it. It would have to have been made before 1964 or so. Today we use BoPET (Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate), generally known as Mylar. It was developed in the middle to late 1950's, and was instrumental as a building material in the NASA satellites Echo I and II, launched in 1960 and 1964. Mylar was used for aerospace because it was light, thin, strong, and particularly resistant to extremes of heat and cold. These same properties made it ideal for microphone diaphragms. In short, Mylar doesn't give a rat's ass about the heat from the tube in a tube mic. Not so with PVC, which was deformed by much smaller heat variances. The practice of hanging mics upside down was already well established by the late 1940's for this reason. And- as pointed out above, it does make it easier to see the words or music on a stand. Today, we mostly hang mics upside down because that's what we are used to seeing. Half the time, the mic doesn't even have a tube- it has just become a convention. Of course, in the 40's and 50's, all condensers (and all preamps) had tubes, because the field-effect transistor (FET), although patented in 1925, didn't come into common use until the early 1960's, when the first commercially available silicon transistors were introduced. Want your mic rightside up? Go for it. A lot of people are starting to do it that way just because the mic is less likely to fall out of the shockmount.-Richie
 
Funny how my opinion changed in the last 5-6 YEARS, Richie. I now DO own quite a few PVC diaphragm mics, Richie (presumably you've heard of Siegfried Thiersch)... plus I know the full back story of the U47 and the heat issue vs. the PVC diaphragm, which, as I said in the OTHER THREAD just today, how the heat affected the acceleration of drying out the PVC and how the majority of heat in the U47 came from the wire-wound heater drop resistor as opposed to the tube...Richie.

Of course, you've already read my post in the OTHER thread by now and are not just now responding to a comment I made in 2005, eh Richie?

Of course you check the date stamp, don't you Richie?

And of course, you know that Mylar also DOES give a rats ass about heat, right? Just not the amounts that a tube mic generates. Ever hear of shrinky dinks?

And let me guess, you already knew that modern Mylar film doesn't have the 'grain problems' that they thought it had when that argument was originally brought up. Modern Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate is now cross-rolled so it doesn't have grain and behaves more like PVC. But you already knew that, didn't you Richie?
 
Last edited:
Why was this "microphone upside down" thread resurrected rather than any of the 20 other "microphone upside down" threads that have been and gone over the years...?

bdenton... I'm looking at you...:confused:
 
Armistice said:
Why was this "microphone upside down" thread resurrected rather than any of the 20 other "microphone upside down" threads that have been and gone over the years...?

bdenton... I'm looking at you...:confused:
Click to expand...

I sometimes get lost in the muck and meyer of the total threads of the same issues. :confused:
 
OK, Philgood. I am properly chastised. No, I didn't read the "other" thread. Reading every thread on this board is incompatible with having a life. And no. I didn't pick up on the original time stamp. I'm not the Nimrod who resurrected this 5 year old thread. You are hereby identified as someone who has quite a bit more than a clue, and yes, I was aware of at least some of the differences between older and newer Mylar. I hereby also bow to the greatness of your obviously bitchin' mic cabinet, and express my envy, in all seriousness, of your vintage U47's, U67's, or whatever.
So- enlighten me, Master Po- I know that modern mic manufacturers use as a marketing/hype point, the thin-ness of modern diaphragms measured in single-digit microns. It seems unlikely that the PVC diaphragms of 1940's and 50's Neumanns could achieve that (although, of course, I could be wrong). Do you have any idea how thick those PVC diaphragms really are/were, and have you detected a practical difference between the generated signals, depending on the diaphragm material? Also, none of what you have added changes the fact that everything I said above was essentially true. Of course, I no longer doubt that you really do have tube mics with PVC diaphragms, and I respect the financial commitment you have made to your mic cabinet. Thanks for your insight.-Richie

"Jim, I'm a historian, not a mic tech."
 
Last edited:
Richard Monroe said:
...generally known as Mylar. It was developed in the middle to late 1950's, and was instrumental as a building material in the NASA satellites Echo I and II, launched in 1960 and 1964. Mylar was used for aerospace because it was light, thin, strong, and particularly resistant to extremes of heat and cold.
Click to expand...

Actually Mylar was "discovered" on the crashed Roswell UFO by Dupont Scientist hired by the USAF to reverse engineer the craft. - just a little FYI ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top