I mainly play saxophone in a funk horn section, but a couple of tunes require me to switch to harmonica. Usually I play a shaker madcat through a lone wolf pedal, into the PA via a DI box. BUT this is all a pain in the neck in small venues without enough channels etc and it is for only 2 tunes out of 30.
SO… I was thinking for some gigs that I might take my AKG clip-on mic off my saxophone and use it in my cupped hands like a small harp mic. Obvs the sound guy would have to moderate the volume. It sounds ‘OK’ in my kitchen but…is it going to work on a gig?
Would love to know if any sax/harp doublers have tried this. Thanks!
Hey @nickcavill - Welcome to the forum! Happy to have another multi-instrumentalist here.
I don’t play sax and can’t directly help you, but I’m curious to here how it goes. I’m optimistic that it will work. My only concern would be if it feeds back when you cup it with your hands, but if that’s not happening in your kitchen, then I’m guessing it won’t happen in the club.
I’m thinking the harmonica is quieter than the sax, but of course the mic position is closer so it may work out?
If a volume adjustment is necessary to avoid feedback, does your receiver have a way to adjust volume? If it does, you could do it yourself when you do your instrument change if the sound guy is outside having a cigarette or something.
BTW - do you like your shaker mic? Which model do you have?
Thanks Luke. It workled really well! so much less hassle than having an extra mic etc. the sound guy said it sounded great and had quite a unique flavour (or some such comment…!). I don’t think he even turned me down (like you said what you lose on the vloume of the instrument you gain in proximity). The other thing is the clip-on mic is tiny so very easy to cup.
Awesome. That’s so cool to hear, Nick. Thanks for coming back and updating us. I had a feeling it would work well. I’ve seen people use old iPhone headphone microphones as harmonica mics and it actually sounded pretty cool. I was thinking the size would be nice. Like a Shaker Mic, but probably EVEN SMALLER.
Now, if you wanted to, you could make a pedal board for both instruments. My wife plays trumpet and I made here a little pedal board with a Reverb, a Delay (echo), An octave pedal, and an AutoWah (the octave pedal + autowah is such a killer sound on trumpet and sax.) I have a an XLR cable that comes out of the wireless receiver which I put a XLR-1/4" transformer to go into the first pedal, then I have a 1/4" cable coming out of last pedal going into a DI. So instead of plugging XLR cable from Front of House into the wireless receiver, I just plug it into the DI, and then wifey has all those pedals at here disposal.
Sounds like you’re doing something kinda similar with the Lone Wolf pedal for the harmonica. Just thinking you could incorporate that into your set-up, and who knows maybe even add in a fun pedal to try with the sax?!?!
