Overhead microphones for a primary school stage

[will81]

Hi,

 

The primary school I work at currently has a basic mixer into which are plugged a pair of wireless microphones.

 

Teachers keep asking for more wireless microphones – not realising, I suspect, how expensive they are and how easily they are dropped and broken by little hands. My idea is to sling a light steel cable above the stage (probably 2–3m above the children's heads) and attach three or four small overhead microphones to it, spaced regularly across the stage. I have two questions:

 

1. Is this acoustically feasible? We already suffer a bit with feedback from the wireless mics, although this can be reduced by turning the 2.5kHz channel on the equaliser right down (and creating a compensatory profile in iTunes if we have any music!).

 

2. Which microphones should I go for? I don't have a concrete budget but I'd rather not spend much more than £100 on the microphones themselves if I can get away with it. I was wondering about getting two pairs of Behringer C-2s. The hall is also used for PE and while balls should never be going that high (they'd hit the stage lights if they did – but occasionally they do!), I'd like to think that whatever microphones go up there will happily swing if knocked, rather than quietly dying at the first impact.

 

The mixer has 4 spare microphone channels, all of which can provide phantom power. The hall is about 15m deep and 20m wide (maybe a little bigger – it's difficult to judge from home!). The stage is about 10–15m wide and has three small speakers (I'm not sure what sort) mounted near the ceiling (about 5m above the stage), facing outwards (towards the audience). There are another three speakers (of the same sort) on the back wall facing forwards, which are not currently connected but could be with the dab of a soldering iron.

 

I'm also keeping an eye on this thread, which is similar.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

-Will.

[paulears]

If the radio mics - which are closer to people's mouths are already causing feedback issues (the eq is quite usual, by the way) - then mics even further away will make it much worse. The more microphones (radio or cabled) you have means a busy time for the sound operator - there is one, I assume? Set and forget operation is often wished for, but rarely achieved - the more open mics you have, the worse the problem will get. The radio part of it, to a large degree, is irrelevant.

 

One thing - cheap radio mic systems in the de-regulated band mean that four is about your lot. If you need more than this, then licensing is also required - and as described in many other topics - very dodgy at the moment as your kit could become scrap when the Government carry out their cunning plan. Once the school has a license, then you can't pretend you don't have unlicensed kit when changeover happens!