attaching a mic to a tuba or sousaphone

[Paul Tkachenko]

But that's still a mic ... I'm very happy with the SD system mic.

This is a transducer pickup ...

[tubatooter1940]

I know a boomed out Schure SM57 is inferior to Bloke's rig but I hate the "huffing" sound I make when blowing water out. With a mike on a boom I can lean away from the mike and not interrupt the M.C. speaking between songs.
On the road I tried duct taping my SM 57 just inside the bell. I am no stickler but it sounded pretty good down there.
toots

[Paul Tkachenko]

That's the great thing about the SD System preamp - you can just flick the off switch and empty out quietly ...

[imperialbari]

Moreover, on the "loud" gigs, I've learned to let water out between tunes when the band leader is talking REALLY loudly to the audience

The effect is especially brilliant, if one blows the water right, when he breathes.

K

[tubajazzo]

could give some alert to the physicians in the audience...

[swillafew]

I missed seeing a link to a recording of your group.

[imperialbari]

http://tinyurl.com/blokified-Black-CCHelicon-Bird

[swillafew]

"Amazing Grace" gives a pretty good account of the sound, I think. The tuba comes across clearly and well. Nice job.

[neil]

Has anyone tried one of these?

http://www.barcusberry.com/product.cfm?ProductID=6" target="_blank" target="_blank

I'm getting into effects and a mike is a bit of a pain.

For the record, I use an SD system setup and it works very, very well. I clip the belt pack to the instrument and it's very handy to have an on/off switch and volume pot on the instrument.

I've used these clarinet/sax pickups from Barcus Berry in the past, both on sousaphone and my PT6. The output was extremely distorted out-of-the-box so I ended up wrapping the pickup in a small amount of foam to dampen the sound. It actually worked quite well for many years, although I had to replace the preamp 2 or 3 times as the input jack is quite fragile. It's possible to repair but after re-soldering the jack to the board, it was even more fragile, coming disconnected during gigs more than once. I ended up abandoning the setup - at least temporarily - after the pickup's cable frayed and became unusable. I was very satisfied with the sound when the setup actually worked, though!