Cliff’s Notes

 

Like most audio guys I'm always looking for the perfect microphone for a given application. For example, Bernie Velutti (FOH engineer AKUS) and I have been trying to find a mic for AKUS guitar & Banjo player Ron Block's banjo. We've used an AKG C-535 on his & Dan Tyminski's guitar with great results and have used both a Shure KSM-32 and the ol' standby Shure Beta-57 on his banjo for live shows for years. Neither delivered the "banjo" sound we were looking for. I had learned recently of a new ribbon mic from Shure that is built to withstand the rigors of the road called the KSM-313. This is actually the smaller of two new ribbon mic offerings from Shure with a very distinctive look in a cylinder shaped black casing with a red grill. As with all ribbons it is bi-directional with the front side producing a brighter sound than the rear and capable of 146dB SPL. I'm wondering if this just might be the mic for Ron's banjo. Bernie and I were scheduled to work the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) awards show in Nashville at the Ryman Auditorium with Bernie at FOH and me as audio director on October 1. With 16 bluegrass bands and even more banjos I thought this would be a great opportunity to try this microphone so I called up our Shure rep and good friend Herman Civils of Millar Electronics and Ryan Smith, Shure Artist Relations, Nashville. Both agreed to provide a KSM-313 for the show. (Note: One band had two banjo players. More on this later.)

 

The KSM-313 has a unique stand mount which allows the mic to be positioned in any orientation. Keeping the bi-directional properties in mind we mounted the mic vertical with a 20 degree tilt forward to keep the rear pattern out of the wedges. Mark Thomas, our monitor engineer, wound up pulling out a little 500Hz on the channel. We still didn't know if we could get the gain before feedback we would need in the wedges until we had a band.

As luck would have it Hot Rize was our first band to sound check. Who better than “Dr. Banjo” himself, Pete Wernick, to be the first to play through the ribbon. Our gain worries were alleviated when Pete asked Mark to turn the banjo down in the monitors. This was the moment we were waiting for. For those of you who don't hear a lot of banjos (probably on purpose) we know it's difficult to achieve the right balance between a banjo's tone/resonance, percussive qualities, and attack. How would this microphone reproduce the banjo and what would the player think of the sound? Throughout sound check we heard listeners and players describe it as “smooth”, “silky”, “rich”. It happened that Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, who were just kicking off a national tour, were also scheduled to perform. (That's the two banjos I was referring to). I guess Steve really liked the mic because he and Ryan worked a deal and he left at the end of the night with the KSM-313.

Update on the KSM-32. Monday, October 12th, Bernie and I traveled back to Nashville for the concert & taping of Rounder Records 40th Anniversary celebration held at Opryland. Alison & Union Station w/ Jerry Douglas were scheduled as the last act and once again Millar Electronics's Steve Spittle brought a KSM-313 over for the taping. I'm happy to report that we've found the mic for Ron's banjo and we've ordered three of them, one for each of our stores, Greensboro & Charlotte, and one for our production division.