Klaus Heyne wrote on Tue, 06 April 2010 02:17 |
For what it's worth: Neil Young has used KM84 (modified) for many years for his live performances in halls small, medium and very large, on acoustic guitars (CSN&Y) as well as drum overheads (Crazy Horse).
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All due respect for Neil's FOH engineer [who I've met a few times but can't recall the name at the moment], this is not uncommon by any stretch of the imagination.
While most acoustic guitars in these situations use internal pickups, many still use microphones [especially in smaller venues]... condensers are not "forbidden" by any stretch of the imagination.
Without blowing my employers horn, I can faithfully say that I know of at least a dozen tours that are using condenser microphones [both lg. and small diaphragm] on everything from drum overheads to guitar cabinets. I know of 3 "major" tours that are using stereo lg. diaphragm condenser microphones with tube amplifiers for drum overhead duties [and why not, the stands are built into the drum riser so it's not a nightly setup struggle... and the use of a "stereo mic" helps keep the audio "true" while lowering the profile of the microphone in the sight lines as to not get in the way of the 'rear wall projection video' behind the band].
The days of the myth that only dynamic mics could be used in sound reinforcement applications began to dissolve in the late 1980's and has all but disappeared. Every Rolling Stones tour since "Steel Wheels" [1989] has used U-87's for drum overheads... Aerosmith led the way in the use of ribbon mics on live guitar cabinets [mid-90's]... on some of the later Frank Zappa tours they were carrying RCA 77-DX's for the horn section [it looked cool, and sounded GREAT!!].
The list goes on.
Peace.