And Now, A Reading From SHURE BETA:87A
Mike Ward is the head sound engineer at Suncrest Christian Church in St. John, IN, and as such, he has the final word over which mics are used during services. Well, almost. If Mike had his way, everyone would be using hypercardioid mics, but apparently, some of the congregational leaders have their own opinions.
Luckily for Suncrest, Mike's as affable as he is knowledgeable. Mainly, he's excited about the system's sweet Countryman wireless mics, specifically the e6i omindirectional headset lav, which is worn by the church's pastor. The mic element is flesh-toned, the better to avoid having the pastor looking like Madonna* up there.
*not to be confused with The Madonna.
MIKE WARD: Hi. I'm Mike Ward, and we're at Suncrest Christian Church in St. John Indiana, and we're about to walk through the system design in the room.
We do have the wireless mics at the front. We have Shure Beta 87A's, which is a hypercardiod condenser microphone, personally a favorite of mine. It rejects the most feedback, it allows for the most volume before feedback, and for vocals I prefer to use a condenser over a dynamic because I believe that it smooths out the highs and really tightens up the mid range
And then we also use for the leads a Sennheiser ew 300 cardiod microphone condenser. Personally, I'd rather use the Beta 87's but our leaders like this microphone so that's why we use it. Honestly, I prefer hypercardiod pickup patterns over cardiod pickup patterns in my sound so that's the basic reason why.
For the most part, if you'll notice, there's no monitors here for this guy. He's on in-ear wirelesses so I don't really have to worry about feedback too much, so if they like it better they can have it.
The monitors here are basically a fail-safe. In case somebody's in-ears quit working, they'll still have a backup with some stage volume so they won't get lost and they can continue to sing or play long enough for us to fix the issue. But they're basically there for looks and for fail-safe.
This is the sound booth. This is where most of my work is done. These three wireless receivers that you see here are for the Countryman Lavalier vocal mics which I can show you. This is the headset microphone that our pastors use when they speak, and it runs -- it goes on their ear like this and it's flesh colored and it's an amazing microphone -- it really is. It sounds amazing for speech, it's omnidirectional, it runs into this little wireless pack, it comes in through this receiver, it comes out the receiver and into my console, and that's how we get sound when our pastors speak.
GRETCHEN HASSE: And so they're part of the mix too, huh?
MIKE WARD: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. We have -- Usually during the course of a Sunday, we have the band playing, usually we have two or three people that randomly speak for communion and highlights, and then when the pastor also does his sermon, so we usually have three people on these every week, and then this receiver right here is for the Sennheiser that you saw downstairs, the ew 300.
All right. Who's ready next? You want to play, Bobby?
[BOBBY PLAYING PIANO]
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