I’m in need of a good microphone for whistles. When I visited the local equipment shops, none of the employees knew what a whistle was (Oh, you mean that thing that has the little slide thingy that you pull up and down?) much less what type/kind of mic would work best.
I’ll most likely run it to my Fender accoustic amp and realize this may run me more a few shekels.
Anybody have any suggestions or experience? And yes, I promise everybody not to use a Death Metal Distortion stomp box.
Okay, maybe just once. Unless it sounds really cool.
I use one of those small battery-operated mics from Radio Shack. I’ve found that it works best attached to the whistle with a rubber band on the underside, fairly close to the fipple.
I have found that many F/X work quite well with the whistle. In fact, a smidgen of post-processing delay does wonders for hiding mouth noises.
If you’re not going to be doing vocals with the same mic, I would recommend the Shure SM57. Get a boom mic stand and have the mic pointed down twoard the window about 6-10 inches away. Don’t put it so close that you hear breathing through your nose. You want the mic ABOVE your nose, but pointed at the whistle.
Works for me.
Mike
Depends on how picky you are, but in my eperience an SM58 does the job well enough. But ofcourse, there are always something out there that might perhaps be just a little bit better…
I personally don’t think a dynamic mic like a SM57/58 will do a good job on the whistle. These mics are popular for live shows because you can drive nails with them and they do interesting things to the sound of a guitar amp, not because they are supremely accurate. I’d suggest a decent condensor mic – a Neumann KM-84 gives you a lot of bang for your buck if you can afford it, but there are cheaper condensors which are still OK.
A condensor mic will generally require phantom power, which your amp may or may not provide.