So, as it turns out, nobody in Madison or Milwaukee had a Shure Beta 58 mic in stock. Ward Brodt told me that had a whole bunch. I drove over there, they didn’t. They tried to sell me a regular 58 for $125. They then tried to sell me an AudioTechnica for $199. Um, no, you see, I wanted something specific…So I ended up buying a regular 58 (they’re built like tanks, so it can’t hurt) from Good-n-Loud. It’s taking a little getting used to – it’s not substantially different from my old AT, but it is lighter and has a more sensitive response – so of course it feeds back more easily in the basement.
I also took the opportunity – and the slightly saved cash – to buy a mess of 1/4″ cables and properly wire up my patchbay. I’m exactly two cables short – but the two things I could wire into it aren’t that important anyway – I don’t need to have a separate microphone for the vocoder inputs, nor do I need a separate
routed input jack for the Digitech stomp-box.
And finally, I built a rack for my instruments. I had a very elaborate deisgn all planned out and then it occurred to me “Wait, I own this house, I can bolt things to the walls.” So I bolted a few metal posts to the back wall of the studio so the instruments can rest upright against them. Managed to get all the basses, guitars, and the e violin into the space formerly taken up by two basses. Neato.