Microphones: The Working Inventory

The microphones lesson explains polar patterns, proximity effect and why what a mic rejects matters more than what it captures. This chapter is about the boxes themselves: the handful of physical types you will actually meet, what each one is built to do, and how to tell — before you have plugged anything in — which of the mics in the case belongs on which source.

Because that is the real skill at load-in. Nobody hands you a spec sheet. You get a drum kit, a case of mixed microphones, and twenty minutes, and the sorting is pattern recognition: this shape is a vocal dynamic, that pencil is an overhead, the heavy side-address one stays away from the kick drum.

Moving-Coil Dynamics: The Ones That Survive

A moving-coil dynamic is a loudspeaker run backwards — a diaphragm glued to a coil of wire in a magnetic field, generating its own signal with no power required. That construction is why dynamics dominate stages: nothing to power, nothing fragile, and an indifference to being dropped, spat on and packed wet that no other type shares.

• Handheld vocal dynamics — the ball-grille shape. Cardioid or supercardioid, internal shock mounting, a presence lift where vocals need it. The Shure SM58 is the reference point and has its own review page, but every maker builds one.
• Instrument dynamics — the same engine with a flat grille for getting close to loud things: snare drums, guitar amplifiers, horns. The SM57 shape. Their whole job is surviving high sound pressure at close range.
• Large-diaphragm broadcast dynamics — bigger, end-address, usually on a boom rather than in a hand: made for a voice at close range in a treated room, and quieter in output than you expect. The SM7B page covers the type's famous gain appetite.
• Kick-drum dynamics — visibly oversized, often with a built-in stand mount, voiced with a scooped midrange and extended low end. They flatter one job and sound wrong on almost everything else, which is fine, because they never leave that job.

Condensers: Sensitive, Powered, and Fussier About Where They Live

A condenser generates its signal from a charged diaphragm a fraction of a millimetre from a backplate, and the electronics behind it need power — which is what phantom power is: 48 volts fed from the desk down both signal legs of the XLR through matched resistors, invisible to balanced dynamics, essential to condensers. The result is more detail, more top end, more output — and more of the room, more handling noise, and a genuine dislike of rain and beer.

• Small-diaphragm condensers ("pencils") — the thin cylinders. The default for drum overheads, acoustic guitar and anything where accuracy beats flattery; often sold in matched pairs for stereo.
• Large-diaphragm condensers — the big side-address studio shape behind every album cover. Vocals and anything wanting weight and presence. On a loud stage their sensitivity becomes a liability, which is why they mostly stay in studios; the placement lesson covers where they go once you are in one.
• Electret condensers — the same principle with a permanently charged capsule, which is how condensers got small and cheap: lavaliers, headsets, phone mics, and plenty of respectable stage mics. "Electret" describes the manufacturing, not the quality.

Ribbons: The Old Design That Came Back

A ribbon microphone suspends a strip of aluminium foil a few microns thick in a magnetic field — a dynamic in principle, but with a delicacy all its own and a naturally smooth, dark top end that flatters guitar amps, horns and harsh sources. Nearly all ribbons are figure-8, capturing front and back equally and rejecting the sides completely, which is either a problem or a tool depending on where you point the dead zone.

Handle them like the exception they are. A healthy modern ribbon on a healthy balanced cable will generally shrug off phantom power, but a faulty cable or a hot-patched connection can put that 48 volts across the ribbon asymmetrically — and vintage ribbons are genuinely at risk. The habit that costs nothing: phantom off on that channel before a ribbon is patched, and never blow into one to test it. The foil stretches, and a stretched ribbon is a repair bill, not a mic.

The Rest of the Case

• Boundary mics — flat plates that lie on a surface — a stage lip, a piano lid, a boardroom table — and use the surface itself to avoid the comb-filtering that hovering near a boundary causes. Theatre and conference workhorses.
• Headset and lavalier mics — tiny electrets whose whole value is a fixed, close working distance on a moving performer. The trade is visibility and sweat management for consistent gain-before-feedback.
• Wireless systems — not a microphone type but a transport: the same capsules with a transmitter where the cable was. Batteries and radio frequencies become part of the job, and both belong on the advance checklist the advancing lesson describes.

What to Check Before the Next Load-In

• Sort by construction first — dynamics to the loud close sources, condensers to the detailed ones, and anything fragile away from the drummer.
• Know where your phantom power is going — it should reach condensers, pass balanced dynamics harmlessly, and be off before a ribbon is patched.
• Match the mic to the abuse, not just the sound — a stage vocal mic will be dropped; buy and deploy accordingly.
• Check the pattern, not just the type — supercardioid rejects behind-and-to-the-sides, cardioid rejects straight behind; the feedback lesson explains why monitors care.
• Treat wireless as two extra failure points — fresh batteries and a frequency check are part of setup, not an afterthought.
• Never test a ribbon with breath or a drop — if you must test, speak across it, at a distance, like it costs what it costs.