AKA Gear Post #1

This is the first of two posts about sound gear for open mics. We’ll start with introductions, then hit on whether/why you need sound gear and what to buy, and we’ll close out with Sound Guy philosophy. The next post will get into technique and how to get the best sound from the gear you have.   

Meet our awesome sound guy

Every piece of advice in this series comes directly from my dear friend Andrew Crowe. Andrew runs sound at Tongue & Groove and has patiently schooled me and the rest of the team on the basics so we can do right by our performers when he can’t be there.

He cares deeply about giving every open mic performer an equal chance to be heard. 

Andrew also happens to be a professional musician who turned a used shipping container into a recording studio. See (and hear) for yourself. ⬇️ 

To amplify or not to amplify 

Before buying any gear, the first question for an open mic host and organizing team is: do we even need it?

The answer: Unless your venue has its own gear (lots of bars do), most likely. 

Almost every venue benefits from amplification, but there are a few where it’s overkill. If yours is a super-cozy community space with zero competing noise, where everyone can sit living-room close and you never see furrowed brows or shrugs when your mildest-mannered poet reads her gentlest haiku…well, this post isn’t for you. 

(But maybe this one is.)

But if your space is bigger than a cabana, or your performers have to compete with coffee frothers or side conversations or pool tables in the back (lookin’ at you, Joe’s Grotto), read on.

Open mic gear essentials 

Now that we’ve established whether you need gear, here’s our Sound Guy-approved Open Mic Starter Equipment List:

• One Shure SM 58 microphone
• A tower-style sound system (name brand or off-brand with good reviews)
• One microphone cable (any brand)
• One 1/4” instrument cable (any brand)
• One quality microphone stand (look for the kind with a button to raise and lower)
• One music stand (avoid the super-flimsy wire ones)

The first two items make the most difference, so let’s get into specifics.

Why the Shure SM-58?

An industry standard since the 1960s, the SM-58 costs just ~$100 and gives you versatility and durability:

• Sounds good on all vocal types 
• Adds just enough warmth to be flattering for vocalists
• Fairly resistant to feedback
• Built like a tank 

To quote Andrew: “Ask any audio technician and they’ll likely have an anecdote about using an SM-58 to hammer a nail and then, without hesitation, using it to mic the lead singer of a famous rock band.

Did a tipsy performer drop your SM-58 and now that iconic spherical grill has a big, ugly flat side? Consider it a battle scar. It’ll probably still work for many, many years.”

Why a Portable Tower Array?

Speakers are gonna be your priciest and heaviest investment. Whatever you buy, you’ll have to store, transport, set up, and break down for every show. 

With a tower (aka column) style system, the sound comes from the slim speaker array, which stacks neatly on top of the subwoofer. Cost ranges pretty widely. Name brands like Electro-Voice, Bose, Yamaha, and JBL run $1,300–1,500. But if you read reviews, you can find off-brands a low as $400 that will do fine.

At Tongue & Groove, we love our Bose tower for all the reasons:

• Compact, self-contained, and visually unobtrusive
• No bulky stands, no speaker cables
• Easy setup (like, 5 minutes)
• Spreads the sound to cover a wide area
• Bluetooth- and app-enabled so our Sound Guy can adjust levels from anywhere in the room

Most tower systems come with built-in effects (if you’re up for that), and all of them are resistant to feedback, though not completely feedback-proof. 

Clarity and intelligibility are paramount

Every decision benefits from a guiding philosophy, so as you consider whether and what your open mic needs, remember:

The purpose of amplification is to make it easier for everyone in the room to hear the performers. 

Sounds obvious, I know. But it’s easy to get distracted by mixing tables with awesome-looking dials or to forget that, as host, you have no idea how you sound to folks in the back row.

This straightforward philosophy doesn’t just help you decide what equipment to buy, it will also help you put that gear to its best use at every show. Doing that takes a mix of technical know-how and experimentation, which we’ll get into in the next post. 

Meantime, if this was helpful, send Andrew some love (I’ll pass it along).

And if not, here’s another tune: