Damn dude. That is teh suck. Did it have a cable plugged into it? I'd czech that first if it did. Aside from that, not having witnessed it take a spill, I can't say. But teh suck, definitely. No sound at all, not even fucked-up sound?

Don't know how easy that one is to open up.

It did indeed have a cable plugged in, but I have messed with that and checked other cables.. It only fell.. 3 or 4 feet? And it wasn't straight down, it was with a stand and struck the plastic band on the top of the the mic. Definitely sounded like it took a decent hit though..


Real easy looking to open though..!

That's a plus; never having looked at one up close, I wouldn't know. Then at least you can check for obvious broken connections. I asked about the cable not knowing how it fell, if it put the weight on there that could have buggered something but been an easy fix (swap out the cable).

I've had pretty much all my stuff fall over at one point or another and it's survived. Maybe not the ribbon, but I've been superextracareful with that- and, really, lucky. My big tube LDC has fallen from six feet onto hardwood and even that lived- that was frightening! Sucks that it would be that fragile, but it's probably a pretty complex (for a microphone) circuit in there(?) and I don't know which bit got whacked.

I suppose there is a reason 57s/58s and their ilk dominate live sound, though...

I'd imagine there's some crazy looking, fragile shit in there what with the dual diaphragms.. I suppose I'll check it tomorrow.

Yeah, shit that is invincible has it's place for sure. Can't go wrong with bulletproof equipment. A big part of my problem, is that these fucking stands have no weight to them. I need to improvise some sort of ghetto weight system for their legs or the lower part of the stand..

Seems moast likely to me that a solder joint may have cracked. There are probably a pile of them for two diaphragms and all the switches. It is possible that somehow the fall damaged the diaphragms, but i don't really think that is the likeliest prollem.

I am terribly sorrey for your lots.

Okay, word. This is atleast, mildly goodish news. I will pop the fucker open after work tomorrow and see if I can't find out what's going on in there.

Concurred with Chris. It's probably not the capsule itself, which isn't really in a position to take a direct hit.

FML. I've been up for the past day on very little sleep to begin with. My schedule/wretched carcass in general is so buggered in that regard. Not that I'd even care so much, but it effs with my mental state, which is precarious at best.

I would agree on the solder joints as well. It seems solder joints tend to be the thing that fucks up the most on equipment these days. I mean, shit has to be made cheap and quick now so the solder joints are going to be the ones suffering.

Also Mic stands are not given enough credit when they are good and work well. With any boom I always use tripod bases and then the size of a boom may require counterwieght on the end. Simple method is to get a couple of old free weights and attach them.

Some say sandbags
here:
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/studio-b ... stand.html

Stands and cables are so underrated. They're such functional things that one doesn't always budget for them, either, and they don't do anything cool on their own. Re: cables, balanced cables (not guitar cables- capacitance comes into play here, and there is some truth to how they treat the top end, but that's a quirk of how electric guitars work) especially they don't sound any damn different and the difference isn't in the wire, really, it's in the connectors. I treat guitar stuff similarly, hence my Lava cables with the beefy Neutrik ends. I have a bunch of cheapshit mic cables that don't sound one damn bit different than my expensive mic cables, but they all fail at the ends and half of them are sitting in a pile on a chair in my living room 'til I lop the ends off and replace them with more manly connectors that won't fail. Strangely, my expensive stuff lasts. I've found this to be true outside of music gear, too. Yeah, I paid twice as much, but it lasted four times as long sorta deal. (There are exceptions to this in all things- music gear has obvious ones- Yamaha and Peavey, for example? Boss pedals? Everyday workmangear. Shit lasts forever 'cause it's built solid.)

Stands: agreed on the counterweights, specifically for big mics. (Hint: the KSM27 is not a big mic. Can't speak for the M179. You can beat people with some of this stuff. My NTK, or a big ol' Neumann or Telefunken or a Coles or AEA ribbon or...) Yer cheap stands are fine for most applications. You need burlier stuff to effectively position larger mics for a lot of duties. Sucks, because at least cable passes signal so you can't hate on buying it too much, even if it is utilitarian and not so cool. I have not met a stand that passes signal. I like the tripod bases for portability. The few round bases we have belong to the band; I don't think anyone remembers who owns them or cares. Their weight is occasionally useful when we stick a boom on them though. There's one I often use just to mount a pop filter. They are more useful as a weapon than a tripod-base boom stand, where even a cheapie one is worth something as a recording tool. I have a heavy flat-base short stand that Chris-from-Garda is borrowing in perpetuity on one of his cabs for recording rehearsal. That does alright with bigger mics on it when I'm recording things that aren't rehearsal, but the weight-to-length ratio factors in there. Any old shit works fine with a 57. I have used a 57 and a Boss pedal as a hammer before just to say I've done it. It is about the lamest, least sexy piece of gear you can possibly buy, but...* A proper manly stand... Consider it protecting your investment. They are not cheap, not new at least- find a used one if yer gonna suck it up and foot that bill.

Sucks too twice as much, 'cause at the end of the day, it's still just a fucking mic stand. There's nothing complicated or special about it, other than it's built real strong. 'S like drum hardware. You're paying for the overbuiltness and that it will probably not fail under normal use, and whatever yer sticking on top of it, presumably more expensive than the stand itself, will suffer no untoward damage simply because the thing is made of solid solidness.

*- Am I not right here? I'm as big a studionerd as anyone. Your Atlas stands do not get me off. Your sexy mics on the end of them are another matter. Soviet levels of utilitarian here. Your shit doesn't fall over under its own weight and is hard- very difficult on the big ones- to knock down and can be positioned at some distance from the base of the stand.

I actually bought 4 new mic stands for our PA. I thought they were going to be shit. They were in a 4 pack with 20 ft mic cables and a mic. 79.99 for 4 mic, cables, stands. I really only needed the stands, and those fuckers are actually really nice. The mics are shit dynamic and the cables are not bad, but the stands are very nice. Well worth it. I hate the round base stands, but they do server their purpose. I like them in the mini stand situation for cabs and vocalists for straight stands. Never had any luck using them with a boom.

We've stuck booms on them simply because we had the boom and needed to mic up instruments and we had randomstands we acquired from somewhere. The weight on the base helps. As a vocalist who is usually playing, I have no use for straight stands, and need the boom to swing out over my pedalboard or synths. My bassist, oddly enough, prefers a straight mic stand. He's a pretty tall guy- about 6'4"- with the original incarnation of Garda I was the shortest member at a whole 6'0"- who uses minimal effects- maybe a distortion pedal and a compressor (usually rack for the comp, though he wants a Keeley).

That is a good score though if you got four stands for twenty a piece, even if they were sub-par stands, with the 20' mic cables, even if those were sub-par mic cables just because of the length. And re: mics, to a point (unless you've accumulated mass quantities of it), there's usually a use for beater gear. Sometimes all it needs to do is pass signal. While it's actually decent kit, I keep a 57 at home because fuckit, If I want to mic something up or sing I have it, even though every other mic I own (save for my other 57s) or have owned for some years does something cooler, and whatever.

Sandbags are fantastic for the cheepo stands. The little kind designed for the porpoise(like these: http://setshop.com/studio-equipment/sandbags) are ideal because of the shape of them and the fact you can attach them a few different ways depending on need, but they can be pricy if you buy them from a place like this(i wish i had acquired a few of them way back when i worked there though).

In troof though, i have duct/blue taped all manner of things to the boom end and/or base of stands to weight them down. Last time i recorded a band, i taped the strap my messenger bag full of spare mic cables on. The counterweight only really needs to weigh more than the microphone in question and the extended boom arm. For most porpoises with cheapo stands, somewhere around 20lbs should be fine, and half of that would probably be good from most situations anyhow(like where the boom is not that long, or that far out).

If you are talking full height AND boom extension, be sure to weigh the base down too. And be careful with tripod cheepos, because if you weigh a leg down, the stand can still fall, as the leg will move pretty easily in the same direction that it would go to fold up for storage. You have to be a bit more tricky than that to hold those fuckers down.

Another thing that i tend to do wherever possible, is to tie the mic end of the boom off to the ceiling. Works well in unfinished basements especially, just put a small nail into a beam, and wind just a small bit of baling wire around it to support the microphone. For long term/semi-permanent mic setups like my drumset in the basement, this is the best way i have found, to keep mics from hitting the floor, but to still allow shit to be taken down quickly/easily when needed.

Wow, tree crew is FUCKING UP my neighbor's yard pretty good right now. Sketchiest tree crew i have seen in a while. I was thinking how they seem totally outmatched by the two sixty foot pines they are taking down.

And then, they just flattened a section of the neighbor's fence.

I've been toying with a bunch of game mechanic designs: http://dtcurrie.comule.com/RPG3/WebBuild.html

I was going to see if I could move this post using my Magic Admin Powers™ but I apparently cannot, so I am quoting it in the proper thread.

Where did I quite carelessly put that the first time?

Ha! NVM, I see where I went wrong.

I agree on the 'phones thing. And I am a big headphone listener, have been for aeons now. There's almost always necessary changes; I've only done a handful of things on 'phones I think translate how they should. With 'phones I trust frequency-wise, I'm totally happy doing the rough mix on those- and often do, considering my vampiric schedule. But for anything serious, I always gotta switch over to the speaks to balance it right. Now, with the Grado SR80s and the ADAM A5xs, I can actually get real, real close, to the point the mixes don't sound bad when I switch over. But that final bit of balancing has to be done on the speakers- and go figure, it winds up sounding better in the cans as well.

Now, when I did the first Garda EP, I switched between the ADAMs and the Grados, mostly; the final listenings with the band we added in my old Polk S4s (very neutral for a "hi-fi" speaker) and a set of Electro-Voice computer speakers (they look like little monitor wedges. Tres cute.) with a sub. Switched back and forth. And I'll check on a pair of the cheapest dollar-store earbuds and my built-in speakers on the laptop for final masters- can you hear everything clearly on the worst systems the end-user might be listening on? And go figure, now I kinda hate the sound of it- I think it's cloudy in the mids and can be vastly improved by strapping an EQ across the 2-buss. Also, too much distortion. At the same time, it does sound like a record.

One thing I find really helps is proper monitor placement in the room. I am dead serious; it cleans up the bass especially. Costs nothing. You want a long, fairly dead room for this though. I do so miss my old old house for that- if my old company didn't shit itself and can a third of us I would have bought the thing and turned it into a studio. I have the ratios written down in a notebook somewhere re: placement for optimal listening and can sorta eyeball it now. Basically, you want to be a certain distance from the front wall, facing the long way, the speakers should be aimed at a certain angle toward the listening point, and those things should be firing off into nothing, more or less, way in the back. If I got to choose a control room, I'd take something 20-30 feet long, dry as a bone. It really does help get the low end right. Or our last place- landloard moved to Vermont and sold the place- because I so wanted that attic for a studio. Deadest room I have ever heard; just swallowed up me singing at the top of my lungs. All exposed insulation, weird shape, third floor of an old Victorian house. Would have had to do a lot of work re: heating/cooling and getting more than a couple outlets up there and I probably would have had to section it off if I wanted a live room, but it would have been a hell of a recording environment. I wish, sometimes, The Snaxodrome could be better arranged as a mix thing, as it can be silent as a tomb sometimes. 3 AM and no one in that building and you can hear a hard drive spinning when you're in the back room. Creepy quiet.

Also: glad yer hand isn't fucked up. I have paranoid fears about my hands and eyes. Deathly afraid of something happening to either.

I have finally got semi-ok at fingerpicking