Micing stage for musical

[sandall]

I know that I was impressed with the shotguns - recommending them to others as wonderful. Then the boundaries got my support, because they were clearly better.

My only experience of boundaries is the original Tandy PZM (modified for phantom power & balanced out) - the PCC160s may well be much better. Angling (short) shotguns can be a compromise between picking up those near the front (cast were mostly too afraid of falling into the band to get very close) & those near the back. Size of stage obviously has an effect - I was usually working with smallish stages of about 30' width x 20' depth. Choice of guns is also important - I was using ME88s, which were fine, but the set of Chinese ones from CPC I tried were pretty horrible.

 

hand mics on stands look simply unacceptable

Totally agree, but - for a few years I was running sound & lighting for 3 local authority halls, one of which had a largely South Asian programme, with big stars on tour, attracting over-capacity audiences paying big money. The drama groups who used proper sets were quite happy with stand mics in view, but those with no set, who just used a few chairs, basically did radio - 4 stand-mics, with everyone standing in front of a mic & shouting. They always went down a storm.

 

when the first person complains, it's YOUR fault.

Every time !! There are good bands & bad sound engineers; NEVER the other way round.