Advice on a wireless mic for a doumbek

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Rimshot

Rimshot

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I am shopping around for a very good small wireless mic set-up that I can use on my doumbeks. I make a modest living playing for belly dancers and often I go to places by subway and it is impractical for me to bring all of my sound gear and mics and instruments. Part of the performance requires that I can be somewhat mobile and follow the dancer. I have adapted an AT headset and wireless taped onto my drum with the power pack strapped to the bottom on the side, but no matter how we EQ it it's much too high end and not enough bass. It's better than the standard levalier mics that I had used, but I'm looking for better. I usually use a SM 57 or a Sennheisser e602 on a stand and this is the type of mic that sounds best, but it is impractical to use when I'm walking around. I want something smaller that has a good tolerance for high SPL's and is light enough to not pull down on the head of the drum.
I do a lot of shows on the road and I would love to just hand my receiver to the sound guy and have the mic on my drum. But I want it to sound good. I am a fanatic about keeping my drums in good tune and I am very critical about how it sounds. I've gotten great advice from folks here over the years (and I've given a lot myself) and I'm wondering if anyone has come across the kind of mic set-up I'm looking for. I've gone through the specs on most of what is available on Musicians Friend and zZounds and I'm not seeing anything better that what I have. I really don't know it all and I'm hoping that someone here has some advice on something that I haven't seen or a way of adapting something that will work. Thanks in advance.
 
Rimshot,

I am quite familiar with the sound of the doumbek, having heard it in Egypt many times, and miking-wise, this is what came to me after searching:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/C516ML/

This (or its more expensive brother), with a wireless pack taped on, just might give you both the movement and the lower notes needed.

This way you should be able to get the finger action; you might still have to eq in some more bottom since you are most likely having the mic "peek" just at the rim of the drum, as opposed to miking the underside.
Experimentation....

Hope this might be useful,

Best,
Claus.
 
Personally I'd wait, buy used, or at least stay away from the 700mHz band. All that bandwidth is up for sale by the FCC, and there's a good chance devices in the class that wireless mics fall into will be banned from transmitting. At the very least, in an area like Huntington/NYC, those bands will be crowded anyway, and your wireless rig could be useless in any case if it's in that band.:(
 
Thanks, that mic looks good....

Any advice on what power pack and transmitter/receiver would be best? (I perform mostly within the NYC/Brooklyn/Queens area). I'm not a rich man, but this is important and I want something that will deliver and be useable for years to come, so I expect to dish out some green. I assume that the mic won't become obsolete, and it looks like it has the tolerances I'm looking for, but from what was said, the other electronics might be an issue. Is there a functional transmitter that might be a better work horse that would work with a condenser like this one?
 
mic a doumbek??? geez that's worse than some of those djembe players! Oh, wait...

:D

But seriously, I don't know about transmitters or such anymore, but if you're having trouble with the doum vs tek volume coming out of the speakers then maybe experiment with a compressor?

I used to go wireless with a "doumbek" [heh] with one of those radio shack PZM's, except I took the mic element out of the housing and put it in a bic pen top, then took a wire hanger and bent it at an angle on the end and gaffer taped the pen top to the wire, and the wire to the doumbek, so that the mic was about 1 inch off of the head in the normal angle and placement that you'd mic a tom. I had to use a guitar wireless though as the mic ended in a 1/4 guitar jack. The mic is a battery powered electret omni, and as such picked up everything pretty much equally, took the SPL's as far as I could tell...

Probably not that much help but I thought I'd add it in in case you have a PZM lying around and want to experiment on the Cheap & Sleazy side.
 
Sennheiser Evolution G2 and Shure SLX are two reasonably decent ones with some good features. :) The lower-end stuff isn't nearly as rugged, and the higher up stuff gets to be big $$.
 
Hi Isfahani, fancy seeing you here........ ;-)

isfahani said:
mic a doumbek??? geez that's worse than some of those djembe players! Oh, wait...

:D
Click to expand...

I guess I just play in bigger halls and venues than you do. ;-P

Thanks for the links to the Sennheisser and Shure electronics Boingoman, That's probably the route I should go and I'm going to check that out (and pray I can get something second hand).
But with electronics like that, it's usually best to buy new, with warrantee.

Seriously Isfahani, you know I play a lot of bigger clubs and catering halls (large spaces, lower ceilings, lots of talking, shouting and cheering) and I follow the dancer out during the "drum solo" and she has to be able to hear me (and I can play very loud), but even my playing can be swallowed up by some of these rooms if I'm not mic'ed. I don't like having to play loud on a drum solo, cause you have to sacrifice a lot of the subtler stuff (and I like a lot of the subtler stuff) so mics it is.
BTW one of our mutual favorite doumbek jockeys Souhail almost always performs with a mic, so.......... so there! :-D
 
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