 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Grneta
Date: 2015-12-15 05:51
Attachment: Beltone mic.jpg (90k)
Hi
A question for the more senior players as these devices are somewhat fairly old.
A friend of mine has got these old pick up mics that his father once used for his clarinet. I have attached photos. It seems these were made from old hearing aid devices BELTONE, at least that's what my internet research has revealed.
Has anyone seen these before and are these any good in terms of sound quality etc and are these worth anything.
Appreciate your views.
Post Edited (2015-12-15 05:56)
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2015-12-15 08:48
Poster fskelley, who posted near in time to you, knows a thing or two about pick up mics for clarinets, I know, from prior threads here.
You may want to reach out to him if he doesn't chime in here first.
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Author: Hank Lehrer
Date: 2015-12-15 16:14
Gretna,
I have been a working jazz musician for a long time. Many years ago I had a pickup (can't remember the name but I'll check my equipment archives) on a clarinet barrel, one on a flute head joint, and another on my old Selmer Balanced Action tenor. What was I thinking of!
You had to drill into the instrument and solder in the port on the sax and flute; glue the device into the clarinet barrel. One little mic snapped onto the port in each instrument and there was a control box that then plugged into any amp. I think King was selling them.
Selmer had a Varitone system; a pickup was on the neck and you had a control box on the instrument. Here is a neat demo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQE56FVNqgs
But this was the early 1970s. Pretty wild stuff for the day.
HRL
Post Edited (2015-12-15 16:26)
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Author: fskelley
Date: 2015-12-15 21:55
Indeed I have more experience with barrel mics, and have blabbered on and on more about them here on BBoard, than most. I will try to summarize, and offer links to the other long-winded discussions.
Barrel mics done properly are convenient and offer significant sound isolation compared to any of the other miking possibilities for acoustic clarinet. But ultimately I concluded the clarinet sound captured that way for recording, or sent to a mixing board in a live performance, is missing the characteristic clarinet square wave sound because one or more essential harmonics are missing. It sounds nice enough, but compared to a well placed regular mic, it's no contest.
Long discussion on barrel options and techniques, I made several posts through the years from 2011/7/30 through 2015/8/27-
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=2&i=998&t=998.
A separate thread where I described abandoning barrel mics-
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=429064&t=428938.
Good luck!
Stan in Orlando
EWI 4000S with modifications
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2015-12-15 23:36
I don't know how the specific one in your photo sound slike, but there are still pickups like this made now and people still use them.
I use one and it is not really possible to use a microphone for what I do with it.
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