How Much Wood Would a Woodworker Work, if a Woodworker Would Work Wood

I'd love to have a shop. Even a garage.

I've been working my way back into building things. I have every intention of following the Pulp Adventure hand cannon, plus the medal clasps, space pilot badge, retro style headphone amp and so forth with new props. I invested in basic casting supplies and re-learned some of the technologies. I taught myself how to leverage AVRs to control servos, lighting, and other effects. I started a basic collection of home tools. It is time to start in on some projects!

I'm particularly interested in trying out the quick-fabrication technique of laminating and shaping MDF and sintra over a simple steel core, to make prop guns and swords. This is a natural task for a scrollsaw, which I have been thinking may be my next power tool acquisition.

I've already been asked to consider a stunt version of the Fury Gun, plus a display stand for the one I already made, and to finish a Lewis Gun kit for that matter (and I have a handful of smoke grenades waiting on the final part).

But I'm also very intrigued at making a musical instrument or two. A solid-body electric guitar (or uke) is about the simplest luthier project possible, outside perhaps of a nearly-finished Saga kit. Trouble is, the mechanical demands (strength, weight, tone projection) pretty much require hardwood. And that means that hand tools and a Dremel would take a very, very long time.

And there's two good reasons not to expand my home power tool collection in that direction. One is cost. The other is that an apartment is simply inadequate for sturdy benches, space to lay out, and even basic dust and noise control.




Small tools (aka, a tool that is undersized for the job) suffer from the same flaw as cheap tools; they take longer and, in the end, cost more.

(A cheap tool may get you through one project before it breaks. Try to do more than one, and by the time you finish replacing blades, handles, and finally the whole thing (with another tool of equivalent cheapness) you could have gone ahead and gotten a decent one. And the decent one would have made the cuts faster, neater, taken less clean-up, had less risk of ruining a workpiece requiring you to start from scratch, and, oh yes, less chance of ruining YOU causing you to at the very least spend a lot of money in the local Emergency Room.)

(It's the "Vime's Law of Boots" all over again, and places like Harbor Freight make a great business selling cardboard soles to those who haven't the capitol to invest in better.)

If I were to stick with smaller hand props and softer materials (aka plastics and softwoods, not hardwoods and stainless steel), I could get by with the kinds of smaller tools I already own. It still isn't as FAST, however, as having a full shop. With a full shop you have space to multi-task; paint is drying in one corner, glue setting up in another, and power tools operating in a third.

With a full shop you also have the ability to work fractally. That takes a word of explanation! If all you have is file, you can cut a shape. You just keep filing until you've removed all the wood that doesn't look like the final shape. If you have some tools but limited space, you can get out and set up a jigsaw to rough in the shape, then finish with the file. That is working fractally. But in that limited space, it isn't always worth the time to set up that other tool, and the other tool may not be capable of hogging that rough cut anyhow. So you still end up doing a lot of tasks start to finish with the same tool.

In a full shop, you can stop in the middle of filing, slap the shape on a table saw to cut off most of the excess in one swoop, carry it to the bandsaw and rough in the cut, carry it to the belt sander to do a quick round-over, chuck it back in the bench vise to finish up with a collection of rasps and files, then plug in a hand sander to clean up.

At each point in the ongoing tasks, you can divide it into zones where one tool is more appropriate, do that sub-task, and immediately shift over to the tool most appropriate for the next sub-task. This makes the work much, much faster.

With jigsaw, scrollsaw, dremel and hand files I would have three fractal levels (overlapping quite a bit) to swiftly shape wood and softer metals of smaller thicknesses. The tools would bog down on the largest cuts necessary to build a rifle-sized prop, but for the sizes under I'd be within the zone of efficiency.

These tools, however, are completely out of their weight class in dealing with the 1 3/4" thick hardwood slabs of a solid-body electric!




Right now my best options seem to be an external shop. I could try to sneak a little time in the scene shop at a place I do a regular gig at. It would be semi under-the-table, however, as their insurance doesn't cover outside workers. A better option just might be TechShop. They have the tools. To get access to them, you need both membership dues, and a safety-and-basic-operations class for each tool/class of tools. Those classes can add up quick, at $60-80 per class. And there is no test-out option.

However. The woodshop SBU at the local tech shop includes not just the band saw, table saw, and radical harm///radial arm saw (which I am very, very familiar with after some twenty years in theater scene shops), but panel saw, scrollsaw, and a couple of other things I wouldn't mind so much paying $65 to get up to speed on.

Of course, the wood lathe is another $65, and the planer-joiner and the router table are another $65, and the former is a great tool for prop-making and the later group are both assets to the luthier.

At least the check-out classes last forever; you can think of them as up-front costs. After that, you can just pay for a one-month membership when you've got a project coming up that needs it. Not as convenient for the kind of crazy schedule theater imposes, or the "work on it for a weekend, put it aside for a bit while you work on something else" style most of us are accustomed to. But if you can't afford the money or space for a 4 x 8 foot shopbot at home...



At the moment my plan seems to be to drop in at TechShop SF and see what it really looks like -- how crowded, how well set-up, how conducive to working on a project I could schedule in there. I'm also going to attempt a task breakdown for the solid-body uke to see if I can sneak the larger hogging into the scene shop on a visit or two, and complete the rest with the tools at home. And while I'm out, refresh my memory of power tools available at the local hardware stores, and check out the stock of hardwoods at McBeath.

And if it works out, get some kinds of tools that will allow me to continue on prop making that will also handle carving up a mock-up to see if my ideas look realistic for a playable instrument that would be worth the cost of building.

The cheapest I can get this thing to happen is still over $200. The fish-tail design I came up with requires custom headstock and with that, and quality hardware, the price increases to at least $300 parts and materials. One way or another, I think I need to add another $200 for tools -- whether that is TechShop membership and class dues, new power tools, or (most likely) a combination of the both.

And seems very much sensible that into that matrix of options I need to throw those combinations of tools and plans that have me building a couple of items I KNOW I'm getting paid for.

I'm (Still) Dreaming of a Uk-U-Le-Le...

So there are a couple of other options for building my own solid-body uke. Like, start with a Grizzly Soprano, ditch the fingerboard, have a new one slotted up at LMI in 14.7" scale length, carve a body from MDF (the purists howl, but listening tests show many people can't hear the difference), and set the bridge back to make the scale length come out. I'd still have a narrow Soprano neck, though. Oh, yes...and carve a shallow slot in the pre-made Grizzly neck for a carbon-fiber reinforcement rod, and otherwise trust my woodworking skills to achieve a proper setup.

Add to this, cheap guitar tuners, a re-purposed guitar bridge of the most basic kind, and either a guitar pickup or a hand-wound one. And, yes, I do find it mildly intriguing to hand-wind a pick-up.

But even though the Grizzly kit is a mere $22, you can get a mahogany neck (with rosewood fingerboard) in CONCERT scale length and width from Mainland Ukuleles for a mere $35. There's not enough space in a traditional uke neck for a full truss rod, but you could still slot it for a carbon-fiber reinforcement rod. Of course it would still be a glue neck, not a bolt-on, (unless you got real clever about the butt.)

But on the gripping hand, Uke Builder's Workshop has a Honduran Mahogany neck blank for $16 (who knows what shipping will come out to with all these things, though!) That could be carved to a custom headstock shape, and set up for bolt-on neck, and of course be set for any style or reinforcement all the way up to double-action truss rod. Or just carved thick enough to take the stress. I'd still need power tools for some of the steps, though -- and I'd really rather not carve a neck without a spoke-shave, too.

Unfortunately, neither Shapeways nor CNC (via Ponoko, Big Blue Saw, or even TechShop) are going to be much help here. Either the parts are large thick hardwood with compound curves, or they can be found cheaper already manufactured by people who get economies of scale in their machine-shop endeavors. Except for perhaps something like a complex shape for a fingerboard, or scroll-work, or laser engraving. Or an acrylic body -- I'd rather not cut that out myself.



Which segues into design. The basic design parameters are that it plays well and feels comfortable. Ergonomics trump all other considerations. Following that is general aesthetics; it should look nice, with clean workmanship and attention to detail. The lowest-ranking element is stylistic. For that there are several directions one could go:

Ukulele-like: an all-wood construction, stained and sealed, with as much as possible ukulele body and headstock shape and even details such as bridge and nut style, headstock angle, fret length, etc.

Minitele: a miniature Telecaster; body shape, headstock (changed enough to avoid attention from the lawyers, of course!) and Fender-style pick guard, pick-up ring, bridge, knobs, jack, and so forth. Done in something typical like candy-apple red gloss.

-Ish: designed towards a striking "look" in some style or other; Steampunk, Futuristic (aka acrylics and built-in lights), Diesel-punk (metal, rivets, toggle switches and tubes), Lantean, organo-tech, etc. These are probably the options that most leverage my existing experience in prop building, metal working, casting, and electronics.

Stylized: the shape of a traditional or pineapple uke, but abstracted and cartooned; a Cubist uke, with sharply slanting headstock, emphasized contours, and so forth.

Like No Instrument We've Encountered Before: done with the kinds of materials and attention to detail of a traditional instrument (acoustic or otherwise) but with contours and details that are unique; like Spock's Vulcan Lyre.


I'm leaning more towards the latter two at the moment. In all cases, of course, the first test would be to carve a mock-up body from cheaper material (like blue foam) and even temporarily mount a neck and nylon bridge on it so I can test the ergonomics thoroughly before committing to the actual build.



As far as all that goes, however, I have a couple other musical instrument projects for a rainy day. A cheap "garklein" style recorder with horrible intonation that needs to be cleaned out and tuned. A fipple-flute based MIDI breath controller -- I have the pressure transducer already and just need to find time to bench test the concept.

And other, more useful semi-musical gadgets. I am looking at possible wacky instruments showing up in the pit for Pirates, and I think Willy Wonka should be a total immersive sound design. And I really have to, one of these days, finish wiring up my dedicated Qlab controller surface, with or without the MIDI-over-USB I finally have the software tools to achieve.

And then there's more ordinary props. Compared to the steps, tool work, cost of materials and hardware, and necessary precision of work for musical instrument (even a solid-body ukulele), something like a laser pistol with "sound and lights" electronics inside is SIMPLE.

NO UKE FOR YOU

I took a little time to look deeper at the idea of making a ukulele. Okay, sure, I have a uke already. A cheap Rogue with friction pegs, veneer top, and horrid intonation. I've been meaning to upgrade to a concert scale anyhow (slightly larger fret and string spacing but the same tuning). But I've also had a certain desire to try an electric instrument.

You can buy an electric uke. Most of them are electric-acoustic which is NOT the same thing. Of the steel strings, there are only a few options and most of the decent ones are expensive. What I want is something with the curves and shiny paint of a Strat or Tele, that plays like a uke, and when someone asks where I got it, I can tell them I made it. Or at least assembled the kit.

So I did some research. I could build a cigar-box uke without too much trouble. One downside to that is would probably be less playable than my Rogue; cheap materials and simple construction often leads to less-than-lovely tolerances, and for musical instruments tolerances matter. The other downside is that there's no point in having a second cheap uke. I want an upgrade.

Once you go steel-string, though, even with a solid-body, the mechanics become much more difficult. It is the same problem I had with the "Fury Gun" I built last year; in that case, it was five pounds of good Krups steel on 30" long barrels and I needed proper machined parts to keep it from falling apart under it's own weight.

And then add the problem of it being, well, a ukulele. I'm not going to be happy with string or fret spacing from an electric guitar (even if the tuning worked out, which it doesn't), or even an electric mandolin (for which you can find fairly inexpensive kits.) This was going to be a uke, dammit. Re-entrant tuning and all (unlike a guitar, the lowest pitched string is in the middle, not on the bottom).

So this means I need bridge, nut, and tuners that can handle steel strings. That's a bit of cost already. There's a company that makes a good bridge for a steel-string uke for about fifty bucks. A set of tuning machines will of course cost 20-40 dollars themselves. And you still need ferrules and so forth.

The tension of those steel strings is too much to trust a glued wood neck to. It needs reinforcement, preferably a double-action truss bar (so it can be adjusted to flatten the curve of the neck to within the close tolerances needed to make a properly set-up instrument). And no-one, of course, makes a uke neck with a truss bar. So that's either hand-carve one from twenty bucks of hardwood, or slot a pre-made neck -- as little as another twenty bucks for the pine neck of a cheap Grizzly kit, or a decent mahogany one for 35 to fifty dollars. Plus the truss rod of course!

And that doesn't necessarily cover the frets, which might require some time with fret wire. I am not a masochist, though; if I have to make my own fingerboard, I'll buy one pre-slotted (and pre-cambered).

A guitar pick-up has the wrong spacing and too many strings. You could hand-wind your own. Or you could get a decent four-string pick-up from Almuse for about fifty bucks. And add another twenty-thirty bucks for the basic electronics, and the cheapest set of parts that makes a decent electric uke comes out to at least two hundred bucks.



A temptation appears at this point; to go the other way and accept the challenge of making the cheapest possible electric uke. Scrap and salvage wood. Threaded steel rod for a truss rod. Actual wires for fret wires. But there are two big problems with this scheme. One is that time and money graph against each other. if you want to do it cheap, it will take longer. Perhaps much, much longer -- when you are talking about things like making your own tuners from scratch. The other is that cheap and substitute materials are too likely to end up with, again, a uke that is nearly unplayable. And more than any other goal, I want a decent instrument I can continue to learn and grow on.



So. As another alternative, could Frankenstein a Grizzly soprano kit ($22) and a Saga electric mandolin kit ($116) and make an instrument. At the end of it, though, you'd have a mandolin bridge -- not a solid-body guitar or uke style -- lousy electronics, and a soprano fretboard. And there's no guarantee you can hack a decent Les Paul teardrop out of the pre-carved mandolin body, or re-purpose the Saga truss rod into a Grizzly neck of an entirely different shape.

So it pretty much looks like you need to go the route of purchasing Moongazer bridges and Almuse pickups and Grover tuning machines from Stew-Mac, rent some shop time to fit a truss rod and carve a body from a nice chunk of hardwood, and spend a few bucks on top of that for epoxy paints and chrome miscellaneous hardware like strap pegs -- oh, yes, and shape a nice pick guard.

So the total cost in parts and tools is very likely to exceed $300. The time commit is not THAT bad, not with pre-slotted fingerboard and carved neck and pre-shaped bone nut and so forth. But all in all does not seem an appropriate project to start at this time.

Props where props are due

When I started in this business it was as a scenic carpenter. I don't mean a carpenter that is good to look at (although I remember one nice young lady who interned at the Park...) "Scenic Carpenter" is the general hand of the set-building trade.

As a scenic carpenter you are expected to be familiar with not just wood and standard theatrical construction (the muslin flat, the platform, the basic staircase), but also a fair bit of both house and finish carpentry (hanging doors, building cabinets), but also non-wood materials. As a carp I was also a welder with stick and wire (and a very small amount of gas), sculptor in styrofoam, chicken wire and glue-muslin, a fairly amateur plumber and electrician (for what we call "practical" set furnishings from desk lamps that light to sinks with running water), and a smattering of other materials and skills including laying tile, pouring concrete, threading pipe, casting with resin, running an industrial sewing machine, and so forth.

(Plus there is rigging and the basics of stage machinery...but that's a whole other subject).

Out in a medium-sized shop -- like Boston's Huntington Stage -- the carps are doing the more basic work as well as lifting and carrying, one or two are better welders than the rest and do the brunt of the welding, and one or two will be split off for most of a week on any special projects the Master Carpenter/Shop Foreman doesn't take for her own. Often you'll have one or two people who are better with finish carpentry as well, a handful of interns who are best kept putting legs on platforms, and part of your crew will "float" from building to helping the scenic painter and her team.

The connected field is props building. Most of the work of the Props Mistress (or Props Master) is wrangling, renting, and scouting for the things. Few companies can afford the time to build every lampshade and pocket watch, and there is no sense in building a dozen parasols from scratch when someone in the area has something that will work for purchase or rental (or that can be suitably modified).

Sometimes, though, you have to build it (and far more often, you have to repair it!)




As a props builder in a theater most of your labor will be things like spray-painting washers gold (to make heaps of quick-and-dirty money for a period show). Only every now and then do you have an important, detailed, actor-carried practical prop like Oaklahoma's "The Little Wonder."

In re that specific prop: The description in dialog is that it is basically a simple prism viewer with a folding knife. The dialog says you wait until the victim is holding it at eye level, unfold the knife, then shove his hands down and into his gut. Forget that. I made mine more of a Speed Racer gag; the knife comes out the viewing lens.

Mine was constructed from several pieces of nested pipe, PVC and steel. A rubber dagger was pressed against a spring and held there by a cut-off bolt running through an L-shaped slot. Turn the front ring, the bolt slips out of the "L" and travels to the end of the slot with a satisfying "chunk" of steel against steel; popping the spring-loaded blade six inches out the business end.

Practical props (aka props that have moving parts or other functions) are the most fun and the most difficult and also the least frequent build you'll have. More typical of the things I built was a fake speaker, painted Navy gray and mounted on the set for Mister Roberts. As I recall, the round body was sonotube, the bracket was 3/4" plywood as was the front ring, and the grill was expanded steel over cloth. The decorative bolts were 3/4" nuts roughly filled with hot glue and painted gray like the rest of it.

My proudest "build" was actually a rescue; the "Man of the Year" award broke on stage on Saturday night and I found the original mold in the props shop and pulled an all-nighter casting and painting the replacement to have it on stage for the Sunday matinee.




Since moving over to the Electrics side of the house (which is generally divided into lights and sound, the former being tasked with any electrical stuff that isn't stage machinery like a motorized turn-table, and the latter dealing with only those things that are part of an audio or video chain), I've not been building many props. Among other things, I don't have a scene shop handy anymore.

I have built a couple little things on my own, however. Last year I went on a small but personally expensive spree and bought more power tools than really should be installed in a small studio apartment. I'm still barely on the edge of what I could whip up with a good basic shop. It is amazing how fast you can work when you can shift from bandsaw, chopsaw, bench sander, drill press, etc., as you refine a shape.

I have hopes of doing some more personal props during the year. My last one was a monster; a thirty-pound full-scale replica firearm with moving parts. Talk about prop buildings involving lots of different materials and techniques; it included welding, brazing, hot-bending, plastrut, sculpting, detail painting, metal fabrication, and 3D printing.

But that's the direction I'm going now. I don't have connections to a theater right now that would want me to build big, complicated things for them. Unless they have moving parts or electronics...then it is possible it might happen. So instead I'm doing stuff for fun, for friends, and the sort of stuff used by the cosplay crowd.

Which was part of why I was learning to program the AVR; I wanted to have (and now basically do have) a tiny computer I could stick inside a hand prop that would sequence lights and sounds and motors in any way desired.

My desired project at the moment is some kind of fancy-looking science fiction gun. Not something from any existing movie or TV show, and not of the more common big and heavily weathered look; something that is more small and elegant and highly detailed like a 1930's cigarette lighter or a well-built machine tool.

The most likely next project is going to be making some M18 smoke grenade mock-ups. I'm just waiting on some empty smoke-in-a-can to come my way so I can cut off the lids, replace them with a resin cast lid/fuse adapter, and screw my eBay-purchased fuses into them.

Mini MIDI

I notice several visitors have been to the posts where I talk about my cheap one-button MIDI devices. I currently make them with Arduino, which is these days pretty much a no-brainer (one resistor, and the MIDI library already packaged in the IDE.) I've been working on doing them both by bit-banging one of the cheap thru-hole AVRs (aka ATtiny45), and by leveraging TeensyUSB or a similar USB-AVR breakout board to send MIDI over USB. There is also a new solution based around the latest crop of Arduino's that makes use of the fact that the Uno uses an AVR (ATMega8U2) instead of the older FTDI chip for USB.

Anyhow. I'd gladly document, or even make an Instructable, on my cheap MIDI solutions if I thought there was sufficient interest. Someone answer this post, and we'll see.

The Kids Speak Out

It seems strange to hang wireless microphones on kids. But the sad reality is that area mic'ing doesn't give you the volume before feedback, or even more importantly, the intelligibility gained by having a head-worn microphone.

Children's theater is a strange bird. Often as not it is a school program or a church program, and there are very few people on board with experience in technical theater. At the same time, some schools are affluent and some have friends: the gear you will find covers the entire range from two channels of Radio Shack special to 24 channels of top-of-the-line Shure ULX. The only thing that remains the same is that the gear will be stuffed in a closet, often covered with grime, and no-one will know how it works.

One of the toughest hurdles I have to cross is getting people to understand the implications of gentle support. That we need the band to play softly (but enough in monitors to keep the kids on pitch and time!) That the microphones are SUPPOSED to sound like they aren't on. And that the preferred position is NOT taped to the cheek one inch from the mouth.

The default, sadly, is usually to tape mics as close to the mouths as possible, EQ only to control feedback, and leave everything on and loud for the entire show. Once they hear how good it sounds with a properly tuned and adjusted system, though...expect to get hired again. And again.




The kids are a delight. The first day I show up, at least one member of the cast will recognize me from a previous gig and yell, "It's the mic guy! We're getting mics today! Yaaaay!"

Then of course as soon as you get them on mic they'll forget they are wearing it, and touch their faces, adjust their hair, talk just before an entrance, or even try to whisper directions to another actor while on stage. Sometimes they'll forget their entrance entirely and you'll put up their mic only to hear (loud!) dressing room chatter. Oh, but then there are the times between scenes in a stop-and-go rehearsal where it seems half the cast is tapping on their mics with their fingertips and calling, "Is my mic on? I don't think my mic is on!"

Two things save you here. The first is that dressing room chatter, and quick-changes in the wings, are loud. Both have distinctive spiky patterns on the meters. You don't even need to PFL that mic to know it shouldn't be turned on. On-stage singing and even dialog tends to be softer and has a rounder volume contour. With practice, you'll learn to recognize it from the meters alone.

The other is that half your ensemble is marking it. Take a quick stroll through the PFL into a pair of headphones during an ensemble number, and start muting each microphone where all you hear is tentative, breathy, whispers. By the time you've winnowed it down to just the strong singers you've got less than half a dozen mics up -- and much less chance for accident.

It will still sound like a full ensemble. Since we are doing reinforcement here, direct acoustic energy is still coming from the stage. And almost no-one in the audience will ever realize little Bella and Cindy and Evan are singing into dead mics.




The best sound, as with adult actors (particularly women) is with a head position. I go through multiple packs of the cheapest hair clips Wallgreen's stocks; generally tape just below the hairline, hair clips at roughly 2:00 and 10:00 o'clock, and depending on the length of the hair, presence of pony tail, style of costume, a third clip near the base of the pony tail, or tape around the 7th cervical vertebrae (high enough to keep the cord from developing a loop, low enough to catch as little as possible of the fine hairs along the back of the neck), or clipped to the neck of the costume.

Bobby pins work but you have to take the time to reverse them (aka use more than one, pointing in opposite directions). Toupee clips need to be prepped ahead of time because most of them will not close over the thickness of a mic cable.

However, children's theater tends towards costume dramas and shows about animals (Seussical, Narnia, Jungle Book, Aristocats, etc., etc.) All the things going on and off heads makes the ear position necessary.

Let me stop and point out here that although it is tempting to tape to ear/along cheek to achieve that last couple of possible dB from a quiet-voiced actor, what you will end up with in most cases is merely a louder breathy, indistinct mumble. The sound has to start with the actor. In borderline cases bringing the microphone closer (better to use a true "Madonna-Mic" like a Countryman E6) is a worthwhile trade-off, but apply this on a case-by-case basis; not as a default solution.

I can not emphasize how important it is to demonstrate the ear position to your assistants, and to check on them frequently. They will inevitably migrate. You want the microphone to follow the cheek bone (generally right below it). This means it effectively points towards the philtrum, not the mouth -- but this is where it is supposed to go. When you don't keep an eye on the taping, they'll end up being angled down and have the element right on top of the drum membrane surface of the cheek. NOT a good sound.

For adult actors I'll tape as close to sideburn as possible. For kids, it depends mostly on the costume. A good default is the "point" of the cheekbone. Put the element there, put the tape behind the head of the element (not over it). Yes; again, some people don't understand the physics. They see the hole in the front of the mic (the grill) and think that's where the sound goes. They don't understand that the entire head is an acoustic device and you change the character of the sound by putting tape over it.

Many kids have thick enough hair that you can spare them the uncomfortable tape behind the ear and hairclip to the hair tucked behind their ear instead. When you do have to tape, try not to catch any hair, and if the skin is oily, wipe down with an alcohol prep pad first. For the smaller kids, tearing the tape down the middle to make a narrower strip also helps.



And a non-technical note on this. It isn't smart, not these days, to get backed into attaching all the mics yourself in some dark corner of the theater. Get several people involved, get the parent volunteers, stage manager, director -- people who have been properly vetted and fingerprinted. I've never seen it happen, but all it takes is one parent mis-hearing what their kid said and you will have a very short career in children's theater.

As with any actor, or any musician, be respectful, make sure they understand what you are doing before you start sticking tape on their faces or fiddling with their hair, and answer questions. Tell them why a microphone has to be in a certain place, tell them how it makes them sound better. Get them to understand a little of how the microphone works, and they will work for you in making sure it is set up right and it stays right through the performance.

Treat them like professionals.



A last couple of tricks. Almost everyone uses those over-the-door shoe bags to hold the prepped transmitters. When you arrive for the show, put in fresh batteries, condom the mics, check to see that the connector is secure, the clip light isn't flashing in a way to indicate a broken element, the fuel gauge shows a fully charged battery. Wrap it loosely and stick it in the shoe bag under the actor's name (or character name; whichever is most convenient and informative).

When the mics come off again, be profligate with the alcohol pads. They don't loosen tape any, but they do numb the skin slightly. Be gentle in getting the tape back off. If the tape is really stubborn (and painful!) use a little goo-gone on a rag first. Pull batteries, bags, condoms, moleskin et al and set the mics back in the shoe bag to air out. Hang the bags to dry outside.

Many children's productions will be double-cast. It is unfair for a class production to have one person get a starring role and everyone else has to play spear-bearers. As partial answer to that, most programs will have an "A" and a "B" cast alternating performances.

Since often these are drawn from the same pool of performers, you can simplify your life a little by assigning microphones by actor instead of character. Then when the "B" cast comes on you re-patch the channels and re-assign the EQ and other processing. On a digital board like the Yamaha LS9 this is literally a matter of a single button press; change the soft patch and call up the new EQ et al just by loading the appropriate show.

Is this thing on?

Finished up the current musical while trying to recover from a bout with the flu. Sunday was two performances, then strike. An hour after leaving the building I was asleep. Woke up at midnight, ravenous. Ate, went back to bed and slept till noon.

So now I'm shopping for wireless microphones. Finally decided it makes the most sense to own a few channels of my own, and rent them to those (few) clients that are willing to pay a few bucks for gear. Browsing eBay over coffee, with the widest possible search parameters so I can pick up those gems that got mis-catted and thus missed by everyone else.

I'm pretty much determined to put together a rack of 4 to 6 Sennheiser G3's. I've been using that model quite a bit of late and I have been very happy with their performance. But I'm keeping my eyes open. I am too "Shure? Unsure!" to want any more SLX's that aren't for a really, really good price. And I know ULX's are out of my price range at the moment, and most of the UC's are in the dreaded 700 band. Plus of course I know better than to get anything with the name "Nady" on it.

I've got one eye open for antenna distros. Although I shouldn't need one for my Sennies, I have wished for a while I could talk one of my clients into hanging one on their small collection of SLX's. The built-in quarter-waves barely punch a signal from stage to wing! But this is the company that will only grudgingly pay rent on some much-needed channels -- talking them into almost a thousand bucks of directional antenna and antenna distribution is not really on.

I'm going to be pushing pretty hard at the short-lived surplus from cashing out my IRA to do this much. Down the road will be getting B3's for all my mics, plus purchasing one or two snap-on transmitters so I can offer hand-held as an option as well. And...if it turns out I'm not getting a clean signal in the venues I work...antenna distro for them, too.



Oud Laptop finished the show with flying colors. At this point I'm leery of cracking the case again to experiment with the ATA connector. Well...there's a children's musical in the same building, so I'll wait until that is over before I take the laptop home.

Meanwhile my rebuilt gighertz titanium has lost picture. I think I got some oil from a Chinese take-out in it when the latter got loose in my gig bag. So on the schedule for this week is to strip it down again, clean it, test the fans are still running, clean the connectors -- and prepare to install a new display inverter perhaps. I'm hoping it isn't VRAM at fault, which I believe is soldered on the MOBO. Or worse yet, the LCD itself -- you can get them surplus, but they are a huge, huge pain to replace.