It Worked for Me: Portable Live Recording Setup

by John Mello

Originally published in American Lutherie #112, 2012



Wanting a battery-powered, unobtrusive, portable live-recording setup, I cobbled together a system. It allows me to use my preferred recording mikes, Neumann KM 184s, in a configuration I like, with a quality portable digital recorder. I bypass the simpler fixed-position onboard mikes of the recorder.

An Atlas TM-1 twin-mike mount is joined to a K&M hinged microphone bar in a T configuration and mounted on a short Atlas DS7 desktop mike stand, the K&M holding the mikes. The rear portion of the Atlas mount has a plywood plate attached with two screws going through two additional holes drilled in the mount. An ART Phantom II power supply is affixed to the plywood plate with strips of Velcro on the bottom of the box and top of the plate and further stabilized with a Velcro strap. The only vaguely tricky part is a 3/8" thumbscrew just behind the mikes that goes through a loose-fit hole drilled in the front part of the Atlas mount. The thumbscrew is held in place by a press-fit rubber washer top and bottom. This affixes the recorder, an Olympus LS10, via its camera-like threaded insert. Two short Canon mike cables plug into the mikes and the ART, and two Canon-to-RCA adapters convert the output to feed an RCA-to-stereo-mini cable that feeds the recorder.