Microphones Body mics for Elementary school??

[SuzanneLuke]

Hello Experts,
I am working with a 3rd grade teacher who is interested in finding a body mic system for our s
mall urban public elementary school. Yes, that means our budget is low.
We have an "auditorium" but really it is a small gym and we use folding chairs. Thereis a little stage. The acoustics are zippo.
Little kids frequently are inaudible and we thought it might be really useful tobuy a system that would give us 4 to 8 body mics so that we could do our little plays and improve the sound. We are planning on doing some Shakespeare later this year and worrying the parents wont hear a darn thing.
I am going to write a grant and want to determine what exactly would be the best thing to purchase.

Ideally it will be useful for at least 5 or more years (so junky is pointless). There is no main board....it is just a gym. We do have a PA system and some new portable audio system for emergencies...this allows us to have the principal address the whole school in the yard.I dont know the components of this portable system but I gather they got something pretty good.

Thoughts or advice would be very welcome. (BTW We plan on leaving this small system in the care/ownership of this teacher. She will only lend it to other teachers who are very careful with it. It wont need to be stored in a general space and used and abused by the wholeschool! )

Best
Suzanne

 

[0HZ]

Right off the bat I am wondering why not use mics on stands? They are far safer than dealing with little kids breaking them every other time they come out.

 

[SuzanneLuke]

Hi,
I can't really imagine mics on stands would work with kids walking around doing a play. Floor mics, maybe, but my impression was that those were never used anymore. My experience with mics on stands is that they work if you are right in front of them, but not really any use for an actual play with sets and movement and all of that.
We certainly do not want anything that will break easily, however the kds won't be running around and playing with them, they would be using them while doing a show. So hopefully that is fairly controlled environment. I would be curious what other schools use - those that do not have real auditoriums with good acoustics and such.
Thanks!

 

[Les]

Wayyyy back when I was in elementary school (in a cafetorium), I remember just having a few mics on stands where the students would take turns saying their "one line of fame", and there were some additional hanging "choir mics" but I have no idea how effective they were. Trim height was really low (a suspended ceiling maybe 9-10' above the stage and behind the proscenium), so they may have done more than they normally would in a venue. We never attempted any real plays. Everyone was either saying their line right in to the mic or all were singing in unison. I can imagine that the trouble with body mics is apart from their fragility, it would be difficult or impossible to mic everyone who has a line, which may make some parents feel cheated due to the seeming "selective nature" of who to mic. "How come I could hear Timmy Smith, but not my Suzie?" would be an argument I could imagine taking place. You'd probably have to at least have some type of hybrid system in place with both wired and wireless mics.

 

[SuzanneLuke]

Thanks so much. Yes, I had some worries about this. I have used mics a lot as an actor. I was wondering if there was a rugged version of body mic and we could have the kids pass them off with parent helpers backstage- no hiding the pacs or wires. There will never be more then 4-5 kids in a scene at once. Hectic, yes. But inaudible is a real headache too. Argh. Well maybe there is no solution. But if anyone thinks of something we can buy that will help us with this problem, we will go for it!

 

[josh88]

I've got floor mics that I use to help reinforce the young kids, the downside is they amplify footsteps quite a bit too. I've also used choir mics to help out too. In any case there's likely not a real cheap solution that will also be durable.


Via tapatalk

 

[Les]

I think as many proximity mics as possible would be a great start. Floor mics can help out, but also introduce floor noise as Josh pointed out. One common workaround that may help a little is to place the floor mics on 1" tall foam blocks. That will at least isolate them from vibration. Luckily, you probably have only a small space to amplify (stage dimensions). Body mics are indeed the solution for your concerns, I'm just afraid that they might not even last through the run. Maybe you could get a rental set and use this show as a guinea pig? Then at least you'd know whether or not you'd want to proceed. Nothing beats testing a product or system before going "all in".

 

[derekleffew]

... One common workaround that may help a little is to place the floor mics on 1" tall foam blocks. That will at least isolate them from vibration. ...

Some controversy here.

I designed the PCC-160, so if you have any questions about the mic or how to use it, I'd be happy to answer them. ...

About foam under the mic to reduce footsteps, try this experiment: As someone is walking in front of the mic, pick it up off the stage floor about 1/4 inch. In my experience, the footsteps do not get any quieter. That shows that the mic is not picking up stage-floor vibrations; it's just picking up the footsteps acoustically, as your ears would do in the same location. So putting the mic on foam does not improve the situation. I usually recommend that the wardrobe dept. put rubber soles on the actors' shoes :>)

Putting the mic on foam raises the mic above the boundary surface, which causes phase cancellations and changes the frequency response of the mic. ...

Hope this helps,
Bruce Bartlett
Bartlett Microphones in Elkhart, Indiana - home page

 

[Les]

Some controversy here.

I always found that it helped, but maybe it was just placebo.

 

[chausman]

I'd go floor mics/hanging mics/area mics over wireless with kids any day. I do it a lot actually. And it's still a good solution.

 

[techieman33]

I was against wireless mics for 3rd graders from the start, after hearing they would be passed around between kids constantly backstage by volunteer parents I'm even more against it. Mics and beltpacks are going to get dropped in that kind of environment, and both are way to fragile to put up with that for very long. Then there is the whole problem of who gets what mic when. Will you have parents/teachers/volunteers backstage that can make sure the right person gets the right mic at the right time? A good sound person that can keep track of all the tweaks that will have to be done on each channel when the mics switch kids? It also sounds like there is no sound board, if that's the case you will need to add that into your budget plans for whatever mic package you end up going with.

 

[gafftaper]

The other problem here is price. An entry level yet quality microphone from Sennheiser or Shure start around $600 each, then there's the cost of mounting it all in a rack. I've had good results with Audio Technica wireless mics and they are a little cheaper at around $500 each. I wouldn't advise you to buy any other brand. Cheap wireless mics sound bad, don't pick up, and break easily. No matter what brand of wireless mic you buy, they are fragile and will break if dropped. They have tiny wires that can easily break if bent. Some have very expensive and fragile microphones. I rented some wireless mics for a middle school production two years ago and we decided to splurge and get good boom mics. When the show was over, we hard to spend $600 in replacement costs because two were broken by "good kids" (including the director's daughter) who were trying their best to carefully change costumes. The mics snagged in their clothes and were destroyed just that easily. I think you are far better off with Choir/Area mics.

At my kids K-8 school we have a set of three Audio Technica UR853R mics which cost about $190 each. We use them for things like skits in school assemblies, talent shows and choir performances. Mount them on a short microphone stand. Position the kids around 4'-8' away and, AS LONG AS THEY PROJECT, you will here everything. I can pick up a group of 4 year old pre-schoolers singing Mary had a little lamb well enough for all 300 parents in the school gym to hear. The UR853 is one example. There are many other microphones out there to consider and I'm sure the guys here can help you pick a great one for your specific needs. The Crown PCC 160 is another good option to consider (these are very low profile as they lay on the floor). It may not look as good, but Choir or area mics are a much better solution in terms of initial cost, durability, ease of use (you try swapping microphones on little kids fast without breaking them), and long term costs.

Also before we can give you much other advice we really should know more about your sound system. Brand and model number, or just a couple of quick camera phone pictures. A quick picture or two of the room as well would be great. Buying good microphones can be a huge waste of money if the rest of the system isn't up to the task.

 

[JLNorthGA]

Most body mics are way too expensive for use with children (IMO).
We use boundary microphones for our hearing impaired system - but that doesn't feed into our PA system. You'd probably get a bit of feedback with boundary microphones.
At $550 + per microphone system (and a mixer, if you don't already have one) - you are talking about a serious chunk of change for the better systems.

We use microphones on stands as a less expensive alternative. We were able to get some decent disk stands with nice pads on the disk. We have several microphones pointed at the stage for the performances involving children. We can feed them into the PA system for the children's performances and the hearing impaired system for the stage plays.

Another alternative is inexpensive handheld microphones - not too good for singing, but reasonable for the spoken word. I picked up some Nady handheld wireless systems for $60 (they have a slightly more expensive variety for $160).
Nady also has some inexpensive lavaliers and headsets. Including a "quad" for $500. Not quality - but maybe good enough for your purposes.
Nady U-41 Quad HM10 Headset Wireless System (14/16/10/12) | Musician's Friend

It all depends on your budget - and the quality of microphones that you might want.

 

[StradivariusBone]

My wife is an elementary music teacher and does plays like what you're describing. Here's a rundown of what we did for her Wizard of Oz musical:

The school has a PA with something like 16 channels in and they have 4 wireless handhelds (off-brand, somehow they still work) that we placed on stands just off-stage. I also borrowed four ancient Sennheiser bodypacks (that do operate within the legal frequency bands) that we use at our church specifically for kids. We put the leads (Dorothy, Tinman, Lion and Scarecrow) on the bodypacks and everyone else was trained to grab a handheld at the appropriate time, and then put it back when they were done. The console and the receivers were all backstage which is a terrible design so I ran the board looking not being able to see or hear anything, but I had a kid that acted as a spotter for me. Once we rung everything out and figured out the cues it ended up not sounding half bad. On an unrelated note, we did an awesome special effect for Oz using a doc cam and a projector. The crappy board even had a decent signal processor and we put some Oz-like delay on his voice. The kids had fun.

If you've got a decent PA, I'd set up that since you can have flexibility in speaker positioning to avoid feedback issues. Gymatoriums are usually very reverberant and with kids having the ability to be that mobile I'd be concerned.

Knowing the age group well, I'd be hesitant to do floor mics. They will get stepped on and they will pick up the herd of tiny feet. Kids don't really do "walking quietly". However, with good, clear instruction kids can be trained to care properly for mics. You have to be direct and straightforward. I would also recommend finding a volunteer parent to be the "mic mom/dad" and hound the kids about returning equipment and being responsible. I would talk to the parents of the kids and see if anyone has a connection that could loan out some older wireless mics from a church or community group. Between my day job, church job and wife I'm always borrowing and loaning stuff from site to site, and usually it's easier than making a big investment.

Good luck!

 

[TimmyP1955]

If you go with MicrohoneMadness.com for the mics. Sound good, robust, comparatively cheap.

 

[0HZ]

If you go with MicrohoneMadness.com for the mics. Sound good, robust, comparatively cheap.

A person at the university I attend said these are pretty awesome bang for the buck, he is sorta into sound so I do not know how much salt to take with it. What is your experience with them? Regardless it is still probably not a viable solution to this issue due to the total cost.

 

[David Ashton]

without a good PA and a skilled operator and acoustic treatment to the gym, you have no hope of getting a good sound, a few wireless mics is simply a waste of money.
The only practical solution for you is to pre-record the show and have them lip sync, this way each parent will hear their little angel and you will know exactly how the show will sound.
Peoples expectations of film quality or tv quality sound are totally unobtainable, do a pre-record and mime, much safer.