How to achieve sufficient gain without excess hiss

So, I learned a few things. I found there was a third wire sheered off at the transformer in the handle portion of things which I had kept laying around. I ended up resoldering the mic as a whole unit again, ran an XLR cable to a female XLR chassis plug on the accordion and purchased an Xvive U3 wireless XLR transmitter and receiver.

Voila! Gold! The third wire and using the correct transmitter and receiver were the answers! Now I am super loud without hiss - however not quite loud enough as the band is too much, so I simply use the speaker a s monitor and route the out as a DI into the Mains.

So far so good!

Now...the problem that has arisen is that my bellows have since failed and I am having to use a different accordion. The issue is that an SM58 will not fit inside, it is very close but no cigar (way more reeds in this other accordion).

Question - what is out there for a thin bodied Dynamic microphone. I measured approximately a maximum of 22mm space at the bottom end and 33mm space at the top end of available space. A typical SM57 measures 23 and 32. So it is very close but still too much. It would be nice to have a little more clearance. Any ideas?
 
How are you using a Triton Fethead that requires phantom power with a wireless electric guitar transmitter? A dynamic mic level output is not up to the level of a guitar pickup, so I think you need a belt-clipped, battery-powered preamp in front of the wireless transmitter. Putting the Fethead on the receiving end (assumed, since it's needing phantom power), isn't working.

There might be a stereo mixer preamp that you could find but two mics will complicate things. I'd try to get by with one. Also, that SM58 usually goes through a transformer. If you tossed that part, it's likely not helping. Maybe buy that cheap Behringer SL-75C look-alike of the SM57. The Behringer is transformer-less, and is going to be a cheaper way to experiment, if you decided to try stereo.

Right on all accounts. Am now using an Xvive U3 XLR wireless system with the SM58 reunited with its original transformer and everything is great.

Until I basically blew the old bellows. Now I need to install this system into another accordion until I can get the bellows fixed. So I was looking for those Behringer SL 75C mics and can't find them anywhere in Canada of yet...but I may even try a Pyle just for fun.

The more I have been looking into things the more I wonder about using a hyper cardioid to better capture the entire accordion being that the mic placement is about centred inside. I am limited in knowledge but also assume a bi directional figure 8 is out of the question due to typical nature of construction (fragile ribbon). Perhaps I am overthinking the pattern thing here, but just wondering if it will be more relevant considering the limited space and many more reed blocks inside the new accordion affecting/impeding sound wave travel. I haven't noticed a lot or any difference in how it works with the changes I made, so hopefully not an issue.
 
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The more I have been looking into things the more I wonder about using a hyper cardioid to better capture the entire accordion being that the mic placement is about centred inside. I am limited in knowledge but also assume a bi directional figure 8 is out of the question due to typical nature of construction (fragile ribbon). Perhaps I am overthinking the pattern thing here, but just wondering if it will be more relevant considering the limited space and many more reed blocks inside the new accordion affecting/impeding sound wave travel. I haven't noticed a lot or any difference in how it works with the changes I made, so hopefully not an issue.
Are you wondering if the "tail" on the hyper-cardioid pattern will be of use, i.e., a very unbalanced figure 8? Well, maybe, but you know, I think the sound of all those reeds is pretty much present in that small space, so whether it's noticeable or not would be hard to test because you'd be using a different mic, i.e., is it the pattern, or the mic?

It would be interesting to rig up something with a switchable pattern and record directly to determine if that's got some value, but don't know of anything small enough like that. TBH, I'd think a dynamic (not condenser) omni might be interesting, but you might start getting a lot more mechanical noise, too.
 
Are you wondering if the "tail" on the hyper-cardioid pattern will be of use, i.e., a very unbalanced figure 8? Well, maybe, but you know, I think the sound of all those reeds is pretty much present in that small space, so whether it's noticeable or not would be hard to test because you'd be using a different mic, i.e., is it the pattern, or the mic?

It would be interesting to rig up something with a switchable pattern and record directly to determine if that's got some value, but don't know of anything small enough like that. TBH, I'd think a dynamic (not condenser) omni might be interesting, but you might start getting a lot more mechanical noise, too.

Yes, I do wonder if it would make any real difference at all as it is such a small space.

I found this video which seems to indicate it wouldn't matter much

MIC your ACCORDION accordioncafe - YouTube

Switchable patterns are cool, I have an AT 2050 where I have done exactly as described and recorded the same thing with different patterns, its great to experiment like that and see what works best.

I didn't realize they made dynamics came in omni configurations. As far as mechanical noise, it just comes with the territory - there are things that can be done to mitigate a lot of that but I have just learned to live with it. Keeps it real I suppose.
 
I don't play accordion, but there seems to be a few systems out there geared directly for that market.

Accordion Microphone System AMx7HD - Acoustas

Myers Pickups —Grip Plus-6 with Bass Extension

I hadn't seen the Acoustas system before but it looks very similar to a setup I already had which was Omni Directional and was feeding back beyond function.

The grip 6 is one of the units I had purchased, thinking it would be good because I could transfer it between accordions easily being external, BUT - same issue as the other dedicated systems I have tried...any kind of serious volume and the feedbacks are of doom.

Typical accordion mic systems do not seem to be designed for serious volume applications...at least with loud folk punkesque outfits such as ours.

After experimenting it looks like I can stuff another SM58 into my other accordion so all is now well!
 
How are you using a Triton Fethead that requires phantom power with a wireless electric guitar transmitter?

192.168.100.1 192.168.1.1 jpg to pdf

Well, this thread is already kind of done - but - I was able to use it by plugging the fethead into a mixer on the receiving end of the chain, and it did work to boost the signal FWIW but at the end of the day the entire application was wrong and all of that old stuff has been changed out for new stuff.

I have now installed mics in two different accordions - one an SM58 and the other an Apex 775. Both are installed in their entirety with the transformer (which was originally missing from my first install and causing low signal) and connected to an XLR chassis plug which I then use with an Xvive U3 wireless XLR system. This setup works for what I need, is plenty loud and gets good clarity. Being inside the accordion I don't get as many feedback issues as I would if the mic was outside. This setup has so far been proven to work in a couple of extremely loud and small environments with blazing lead guitars and honking bass with screaming vocals. Nice to be heard for once!

In the future it would be nice to install just the capsule and transformer as opposed to the entire microphone because in some cases there is not enough room inside the accordion to make it work. If anyone has ideas on how to source these it would be great!@
 
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