Live Vocal Mic for a Quiet Female Vocal Suggestions?

[slowcentury]

Hey folks. I need your help. I need to find a really good vocal mic for a quiet female vocalist. We play in a sort of noisy indie rock band, kind of 90's indie rock influenced. But no matter how quiet we seem to get it really hard to get our vocalists voice really present in the mix live. She has a unique tone of voice, we had a hard time finding mics in the studio that worked well too. I think in the studio we ended up using a 421 rather than the Neumanns or re20/sm7 available. A friend of mine who has a similar issue suggested a Telefunken M80. Do you folks have any suggestions?

here is a link to the difficult voice in question http://themoas.bandcamp.com/album/unmastered-preview-from-upcoming-album

[kslight]

She can't just put more air behind her voice?

You could always try a handheld condenser, I've never personally used these in a live setting, but I've used the Shure Beta 87 on a singer in the studio before and it sounded pretty good. I have a feeling if you're having a problem with gain before feedback that these will still exhibit that problem. If its just a actual presence problem then maybe that will help.

[blungo2]

Only talking about stuff i've heard, but i hear that the beyer m88 has incredible off axis rejection maybe that would work?

[accordion squeezist]

We went from Shure 87 to Electro-voice RE-10 and all is well. The sound manager from her other band came out and heard it and immediately picked up an RE-10. Plus with the proprietary windscreen it looks like a girl mic.
Hope this helps.

[mn412]

I have had good luck with sennheiser 935s. Liked it much better then the 87a. I've heard it compared to a 421, no direct comparisons that I've done though. Was in a similar situation as you described, we tried just about everything and settled on the 935 even over the neumann handhelds. good luck

[slowcentury]

Thx for the suggestions. ITs funny we have tried a lot of different approaches to this problem. Both the singer and I have scaled back our guitar amps from 50 watt combos to 15 watts. Our new drummer isnt nearly the basher our old one is. But still her voice gets lost in the mix live. There is always a gain before feedback issue when we get stuck with 58's. She used some sort of AKG a while ago and it worked really great with her voice, now were just trying to find something to purchase for her to use everywhere. A friend of mine with a similar vocal issue suggested a Telefunken M80 has anyone out there had any experience with them?

[lefthanddoes]

Something I've done for my group, which also features a quiet female singer, is just give up relying on the house for an ideal monitoring/volume situation.

We have the sound person run a vocal feed up to the stage, where we have a headphone amp, a couple headphone extensions and some plain ol' earbuds, Skull Candy or whatever (with the optional squishy 'sound-rejecting' ends fitted). No vocals in our wedges = no feedback problems = louder vocals in house. Basically an amateurish in-ear monitoring setup, not wireless or anything, but it works great.

Also, you can do the above much simpler and don't have to ask the soundperson for anything if you use an Art MyMONITOR. You plug your mic in, plug your earphones in there, and there's a clean pass-through output for the board.
_________________
http://lefthanddoes.bandcamp.com

[kslight]

[dfuruta]

[DougK]

Been a touring engineer for years.
I like the m88 a lot for body with female vocals,, but off axis rejection isn't that great.
My current clients use the telefunken m80 and it's great, lots of clarity and good rejection. Lots of top end like a condenser.
However...
technology won't replace technique. Regardless of what you use, a weak vocal is a weak vocal.
Live performance is a art unto itself, and presenting to an audience in crazy environments is difficult. Especially when you don't carry production with you.
I've spent entire tours fighting this issue, compromising the band sound for the vocal, and throwing money away on attempts to find a solution without attacking the real problem.
Sorry to sound like a jerk, but given the info about downsizing amps and playing quietly etc. the money is probably best spent on lessons
to teach the vocalist how breathe properly and to project.