How to mic'e congas and other percussion?

[smejmoon]

Advice needed on how to amplify congas, djembe, bongos and misc. small percussion in live settings and home recording.

Next step to improve my sound is amplifying. To ease the job for soundman, I will get my own mics and make my stereo mix. I'm playing reggae and other carribean music, and start dubbing so some effect will appear.

Equipement will be more used on gigs, so size and weight is more important than high cost and high quality. For all percussion loudness rises and decays steeply. Djembe has big differences in dynamics.

This is my masterplan, note that prices are in Euros, and am from Latvia.

2 congas or djembe (similar like toms, but lots of sound in 2-5 Khz's) / 2 x Sennheiser's e604 / 2x100 EUR

Shakers, claves, woodblocks, cowbells, and such

1x Shure SM57 or 58/ ~ 100 EUR; stand should be found everywhere.

or

1x Oktava MK 012 / ~150 EUR or 220 for a pair;stand and accessories needed.

Above is the choice between rough usage and cathing of nice details. Probably first will be dynamic microphone, that later can be used for vocals or whatever and I will by condenser microphone for percussion.

For all this stuff a mixer will be needed. 4 or 8 inputs for mics. Size/weight is important. Additional input channells for effects would be nice. Built in effect could be cool, but if i understand correctly they are first candidates for breakdown and will increase size and weight.

Then good headphones will be neccessary for mixing and monitoring.

Cables :

10m XLR fe-/male / 3x 11 EUR
+ 10m from mixer to soundman, not sure which is the best.

Do I need a special rack to store these things?

Looks like I could get all of this for 600-700 EUR, then I could extend it by effects, additional (condenser) microphones, stands, monitor. I would prefer to upgrade step by step and good start looks to be 3 microphones for a sound man
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I include information about models and prices:

Sennheiser's e604
http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/icm_eng.nsf/root/04519

http://www.thomann.de/index.html?partner_id=97926&page=sennheiser_e604_evolution_prodinfo.html

Shure sm57/58
http://www.shure.com/microphones/models/sm57.asp
http://www.shure.com/microphones/models/sm58.asp

http://www.yoursound.lv/rez?gr=2⊂=Wired
http://www.thomann.de/index.html?pa...e.html?HERSTELLER=shure&ABTEILUNG=MIXD&iwid=1

Mixers:
http://www.thomann.de/index.html?partner_id=97926&page=gruppe-PAMR-0.html

Cables:

http://www.thomann.de/index.html?pa...dial_cfm_10fm_sw_mikrofon_kabel_prodinfo.html

 

[mikeh]

My live percussion set up consists of a pair of congas, a pair of bongos, numerous bells, blocks, etc, a Roland SPD6 for timbale and other sounds, 2 sets of chimes and various splash & china cymbals.

I use 2- SM57s to close mic the head of the congas and 1 SM57 to mic the bongos. I use either one or two Oktava MC012 for overheads (mainly to capture the chimes, but they also capture the bells/blokcs, etc.) I then take one channel from the SPD6. This means live I use 3 dynamic mics, 1 or 2 condensor mics and one line level signal for the electronics. Everything runs into either a Spirit Notepad (if I use only one over head) or a Phonic mixer (if I use two overheads). The Spirit iis a great littlle mixer, very quite, very small and very light weight (but only has 4 XLR inputs). The Phonic does have a little noise (and is bigger and heavier than the Spirit), but it has 5 XLR ins. I know Phonic is cheap Korean crap, but for a live submix it works fine and was very inexpensive. I would never use the Phonic as a studio mixer.

I do run some headphones out of the mixer for quick reference monitoring (mostly during soundcheck) but prefer not to where the phones during the actual gig.

For live I don't worry about stereo, so I send one channel from the miixer (containing all the mics) to the main board and the other channel (containing the electronics) to a small on stage amp (to allow me to monitor the elecronics). The sound guy then mics the amp. - so I send 2 signals to the mains but both are mono. I don't woory about effects live since most rooms have plenty (often too much) natural reverb.

When using condensor mics on stage you must be very careful with placement both to prevent picking up other stage sounds and to prevent vibrations from the stage (some cheap wooden stages can project every foot step, etc up the mic stand to a condensor). I set the mic stands which hold the condensors on foam pads and use shock mounts to prevent too much noise.

In the studio, I simply use a pair of stereo condensor mics (no close mic'ing with dynamic mics). I prefer to use Shure KSM32s in the studio, but have used the Oktavas with fair success (I have found AKG C3000 to work very well for percussion they are a very "bright" mic.)