Mic Test

 Man...I sort of thought that I was staying more current with my post entries, but reality strikes when I open up Blogger and spy the last entry dated back in August.  Might be because I have little to say. My Twitter and Facebooks entries suffer the same malaise. Pretty sure my last Twitter tweet admitted that I've seem to have devoted much more time honing my harmonica chops than my writing chops since the pandemic started. And I've promoted more gig dates than anything related to my written output. So be it.

I've tried to live more in the moment during 'stay home' periods. Just enjoy whatever it may be that I'm doing at any given time than fretting about what I need to do next or tomorrow or next week.

ANYWAY...I wrapped up the last post by mentioning that the Hohner Harp Blaster HB52 microphone that I had ordered for Father's Day was so back ordered that I cancelled it. Well, when family began bugging me in October to give a clue for a birthday present, I said to just buy me a gift certificate to Rockin Ron's Music and I'd take it from there. They did and I did by reordering the Hohner mic after getting my good friend (and outstanding musician) Sonny Boy Terry's opinion, which was thumbs up.

I've spent a bit of time with the mic since obtaining it mid-October, giving it a run through with my various amps. I won't repeat the details about the mic that can be pulled up on various retail sites, such as Rockin Ron's. It is true that the mic is very well built and is reasonably priced and that a particular mic cord with a locking xlr connection is needed. 

I received the mic a day before we were booked for a private party and the amp that I planned on taking way the Lone Wolf Harp Train 10. I debated between it and the amp configuration with the Windy City chassis and Weber Sig 10 I mentioned previously. I discounted the Fender Princeton Reverb as being a bit to loud for the backyard gig. I figured the Windy City amp would work fine, but I didn't want to go with an unknown entity at this particular gig, so I decide to taste test the HT 10 with the mic first, which was the day of the gig. The amp did not power up. At all. Puzzled me, because I had used it recently at a gig. Glad I checked it out or I would have showed up with a dead in the water amplifier. I didn't have time to trouble shoot the problem, so I plugged in the Windy City. I mentioned in my last post that my Astatic mic with the 151 crystal element won the tone battle over my other mics with this amp. I swapped the Astatic back and forth with the Hohner mic and the HB52 held its own. I tend to baby my crystal elements due to their fragility and felt the HB52 would be a better choice for playing in an outdoor environment.

The Windy City kicked butt at the gig. After setting up, I actually wondered if the 5 watt amp/8" speaker configuration would be loud enough. It had volume to spare and the tone really impressed me. I ran both the Lone Wolf delay and reverb pedals to fatten things up a bit. The HT 10 turned out to have a defective power cord and since it is not a hard wired connection, the fix was simple. Now, I'll  run into the problem of which amp to take next time out. Not a bad problem to face, though.

I've played two gigs with the Princeton recently at 4 Star Concert Hall and Home Sweet Farm Biergarten and debated whether to use the HB52 mic or not, but the amp just seems to like the Shure bullet with the controlled reluctance element a tad better. I do really like the HB52. Harmonicas fit up against the flat faced profile of the mic nicely and the shell is smaller than my Astatic or Shure bullet shells, which makes cupping easy. I've matched it up with the Astatic crystal, the controlled reluctance, controlled magnetic and a ceramic and it hangs in with the vintage stuff.