i was a little grumpy on friday. sorry about that.

megaphone seems like it could work...

no thing, man.



you could also get a cheap shit pair of walkie talkies from toys r.uss. sing into one, mic the other. then eq the hell out of it. sing into a pair of headphones. crnak the gain and cut the output volume on a four-track channel. there's lots of cool ways to fuzz up a voice. remember that the voice and the guitar have very similar frequency range, so what works to record one will often work with the other. it's kind of why ribbon mics work so well for both vocals and guitars.

Yeah, I finally got around to listening to the McLusky tracks you were mentioning, specifically "The World Loves Us and Is Our Bitch" and "Whoyouknow". Turns out my megaphone guess wasn't too far off. Either that, or just a distortion pedal (with only moderate gain) with weird EQ-ing.

thebookofkevin wrote:i did a seach before i posted, but none of them answered my questions.

and the last one you linked to was a troubleshooting thread. the guy DIDN'T want distortion.

wtg.

i've used distortion plug ins, i've run my voice through a harmonic percolator, and i've overdriven the preamps on my mixer. all three sound different. none of them sound like the effect on falco's voice in those songs.

Yeah let's live in the now. This is a place for conversation, it's not a history book. One thing I've found enhances distorted vocals is putting a little notch eq to hype up one high mid frequency and then putting a high pass above it and below it. You can get the ever present telephone effect that so many like, or you can shift the eq to get your own thing going. Just spike one small frequency range and cut the rest. Very fun. Works well with a mega compressed vocal too.

I start with a microphone that is up to the job. Some harmonica mikes can be good. But I prefer a shure police microphone from the 50's as it is a charcoal mike. It sounds like shit like a bull horn it has a handy on off switch. Mine is identical to the one below. I rent a police costume and pretend I am Jackie Gleason in the Smokie and the Bandit movies (remember to have toilet paper coming out of the back of your pants. Here is a vintage shot of the the danger mike in action on the mean streets of LA I can almost hear the Dragnet theme.



These kind of mikes are cheap on ebay. There are many types. Mine has a nice canon plug and I wanted to be "Shure it sounded like shit".

I think you may not want full out crap sounds but a more refined kind of "edge" sound you can get with different kind of mike pres and compressors like a destressor or running a mike pre hot into a compressor or the like. This would add edge with out the full on shit. Steve describes how he gets a edgey vocal sound on some thread here. I think it was about Kurt Cobain vocals.

If all else fails use the Ibanez Lo Fi



That can get a range of boost - distortion and cut filtering but most use it for the "telephone sound" which I don't think is what you want. It does have other uses but might be too much of a investment for you for one sound.

I use a old reel to reel mike through it although any fisher price mike would do as well even I suppose the hi fidelity of any of a number "professional" dynamic mikes hard wired to a 1/2 inch plug.

Make sure it say "Pro or Professional" in the micropones label this is always the seal of quality distorted vocals.

Have you tried a "Mr Microphone" I think it came out in a pink "Ms. Microphone" too it broadcasts out of your FM radio. All you have to do is pick the radio and "dial in" the goodness.







At .99 cent stores they have 007 mikes which are kind of hearing aid condencer mikes that might work they also in New York have a wireless one that you can plug into a amp. Sounds professional cause it says so right on the mike.

you guys are silly and confusing.

losthighway wrote:Yeah let's live in the now. This is a place for conversation, it's not a history book.

I am living in the now. Now I am listening to McLusky a lot, as well as Future of the Left, and I am curious about certain things that I have heard, so I've started a conversation about these things.

One thing I've found enhances distorted vocals is putting a little notch eq to hype up one high mid frequency and then putting a high pass above it and below it. ... Just spike one small frequency range and cut the rest.

Surely you mean to say "putting a low pass above it and a high pass below it"? Otherwise, this makes no sense to me.

Big John wrote:I use a old reel to reel mike through it although any fisher price mike would do as well even I suppose the hi fidelity of any of a number "professional" dynamic mikes hard wired to a 1/2 inch plug.

A reel to reel mic?? a 1/2 inch plug?? Drinking on the job? (I jest... maybe)

As for the harmonica mic, are you talking about something like this guy?

bono wrote:you could also get a cheap shit pair of walkie talkies from toys r.uss. sing into one, mic the other. then eq the hell out of it.

this gives me an idea for a fun project, actually... rather than micing the other walkie talkie and getting more ambient noise (cause my room is far from sound proof), i'm thinking i could just take it apart and hack the speaker out of it and solder a connector to those leads... unbalanced, but radio distorted.... hmmm

That would be the classic harmonica shure green bullet mike. It is kind of the cadilac of it's type but indeed this is what I am talking about it will sound distorted not like the carbon poliece mike but using your hand like a cup and putting it close to your mouth will distort it.

I've always assumed that it's an old crystal or carbon mic, based on the narrow frequency response. I have a few that do something similar. In the 60s, Sennheiser made several budget dynamic mics that have a sound a lot like that. I believe they sold them as "broadcast" mics. I have an MD 21, which not surprisingly looks like a mini MD 421 and has a nice distortion quality to it (I like it on guitar cabs, but have used it for vocals).

Karaoke mics and other cheapos are readily available, but they tend to be more hit than miss in my experience. There are some good ones out there, but you never know. On the plus side, they're dirt cheap, so you can buy 10 of them for next to nothing and throw out the 9 that are useless.

Running the mic to a guitar amp is also a good way to get a similar distortion, especially with an 8" speaker.

Hey! I have an MD21!

I never thought to use it on vocals though... I've always been pleased with it on bass amps and kick drums.

It seems that the hand cupping thing might be pretty important to create some resonance to overdrive the capsule. I'll experiment with that this weekend.