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Re: [ARSCLIST] Blues harp amplified (was Re: [ARSCLIST] Is The Record Shop Dead?)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Also favored today is the Shure green bullet, which has been reissued in the
last 10 years. There
> are also harps made with peizo pickups in them, but they seem to be favored by
the "technocrat"
> crowd which sounds generic and unappealing to my ears.
>
Except...the present-day "Green Bullet" is NOT the sonic equivalent of its
ancestor(s)...which is why I neither own one nor WANT one!
The original vesions of this mike (and there were several...!) used crystal
cartridges (I don't know if they survived long enough to be sold with the
ceramic equivalent...?!). This gave them a fairly narrow "bandwidth"...
which, since they were mainly used by dispatchers and other "two-way-radio"
people, was a benefit rather than a problem! In fact, I used to own an
Astatic version which had a pistol-grip "handle" moulded into its case...
The current "Green Bullets"...primarily marketed by, or through, Hohner...
are DYNAMIC microphones, and as a result have the same wide "bandwidth" as
most modern dynamic stage mikes. The appeal is NOT the sound...it's the
appearance!
For a number of years, I used little plastic mikes I bought for $1 per
each at Active Surplus...an "electronica disposery" in Toronto that bought
up all sorts of miscellany and sold it cheaply. I would guess they came,
originally, with some kind of toy...and thus had the same (C.)100-5000Hz
response as did the original "bullets." The last mike I owned with a
proper sound apparently came with an Ampex tape recorder, probably in
the mid-fifties?! The problem is, today, that even the worst and cheapest
mikes are too durn GOOD for my taste!
Anybody out there in Radio-Land have an old original "bullet mike" or
other low-fi mike for sale fairly cheaply...?! Or know how to convert
the "speak-into" element of a telephone into a usable microphone...?!
Steven C. Barr
(partially-famed harmonicist...)