mic for saxophone through pedals

[durutti]

Hi all,

My bandmate and saxophone player of the band would like to experiment
by using his guitar pedals.

We have an SM58, however he would prefer to have a mic with a clip.

So the first question is which mic (or what type of mic) should we look for.

Secondly, how the chain should be with the studio P.A or an amp at the end. Do we need a preamp after the mic and before the pedals?

Thank you very much in advance

[Dingo]

They are expensive but I would suggest looking at something like the DPA 4099 instrument mic, it comes with a clip and mounts specific to sax and trumpet and is a good reference to look at other clipon mic heads.
Countryman also do a dedicated sax mic and I have heard great results out of Countryman mics.
One issue you may have (if the amount of processing is that significant) is where the acoustic bleed vs the miked signal may be an issue.
On ‘Seven Nation Army’ , Jack White has used a guitar pitched down to create the bass.
In that instance he apparently tapped paper over the sound hole of the guitar to reduce the direct acoustic signal.

[Frank]

Hi all,

My bandmate and saxophone player of the band would like to experiment
by using his guitar pedals.

We have an SM58, however he would prefer to have a mic with a clip.

So the first question is which mic (or what type of mic) should we look for.

Secondly, how the chain should be with the studio P.A or an amp at the end. Do we need a preamp after the mic and before the pedals?

Thank you very much in advance

Hi Duruti

I am a sax player (Tenor, Soprano) : and an FOH/recording engineer.
So I might be able to help.

First of all : the SM58 is a vocal mike. If you look at the freq response , you see it has a early roll off in the low , and a presence boost, and undetermined HF response.

So you can already make him smile by upgrading his mike to a real instrument mike ( or two).
A nice penstyle full range condensor mike will do: there are many on the market. In the price range form : how can they make it for that price, to the absurd.
Brand : I am Rode fan : M5 NT5 NT4 , AKG perception range . and sure DPA.

From the view of, what do i like to be in the mix, the instrument, or tone, I am not very fond of clip ons mikes. The clip-on point is difficult to determine. From the bell one looses the emission from the body. And however you hold the sax , it will always sound the same.
One cannot step backward, to to move the sax into a distance, one cannot claim solo space.
It is all in the hands of the FOH engineer.

If you want a real sax take a condensor X-Y pair. Roughly breast level. teach the player how the sound changes depending on his position. Solo mid front ? In the middle , distant in the middle : step back. Notice that the natural colour of the sax changes with distance.
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To feed the FX pedals, quality of the mike is near to irrelevant. Full range is nice.
Cheapest and many times best like a feed from the desk, line out of the channel. Or take a second channel with different EQ.
Trust the engineer, or feed the signal via a volume pedal into the FX chain. end into DI back to the desk. feed back via monitor in ear.
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I have done all : changed to a wind controller via a synth, more synths
Now a windcontroller via native processing ( =laptop)

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Not clear / just ask !

Kind regards

Frank

[durutti]

Thank you Dingo and Frank for the replies