I work with a big band that plays west african rhythm and of course has a drum section. the stereo bar came up as a solution to minimise number of stands, and better capture the drums. I guess this is useful for those that work with West african drums... the bass drum (Doundoun or Dundun) when played batterie style, has a smaller Sangba and a Kinkine drum one on each side of the Big Dundun.
I used to simply put a beta 52A on a stand pointed at the Big Dundun to get the deep frequencies, (the drum is kind of the equivalent to a kick drum for other bands). then I tried using a beyerdynamic mkv 87 as a clip for the beta 52A and clip it onto the big Dundun (working on keeipng the stage or rehearsal room/studio cleaner). then I tried adding 1 beyerdynamic opus 87 clip mic to each of the other drums (until now 3 mics, no stands). Then i noticed that the deep frequencies of the Dundun comes but not the attack... so that's when the stereo bar came in handy. instead of miking each drum seperately, I put the stereo bar onto the mkv 87 clip and have on one side the beta 52A for the bass of the Dundun and on the other side a long gooseneck connected to a sm57 or something to use as "overhead" to capture the attack and sound of all three drums. so I can get a fair sound of all three drums, keeps my stands availablel for other instruments or backups, keeps the stage clean and saves space which is very very important when you have at least 5 percussionists.
Another interesting application is to úse the stereo bar to get two different mics connected to one stand. for example one dry mic and one wet full of delayor harmonizers and variables to control. a gooseneck also helps a lot. Goosenecks seems to go very well with stereo bars!
Another way this stereo bar made me happy is to have a mic stand with a mic on top and a gooseneck pointing down for a lower mic, so that a flute player can change to saxophone without having to pull his mic up and down.
I would love to know in what ways other people have been creative with stereo bars combined with clip mics or goosenecks etc.
rock on, buy them, you never know when you might need be needing them... from now on I always want to have one around just in case.
