FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Mini Guitar Amplifier

Question:
The surgery to get the cancer out left me with a soft, sometimes strained voice that does not carry in most social and business situations. I've got some regular mikes, a 57, some elecrets, and a Sony dynamic tape recorder model from the 70's that sounds great. For a lecture or meeting room I figure on getting the Peavey Solo amp, with 15w on AC and 10w battery. I'm thinking about a headset mic that could also be used in noisy places like loud eateries and receptions. Ideally, the part with the mic could swing away for eating or other non-use times. I could perhaps use it with a 9 volt, 1w type amp with a little speaker. But these seem to be mini-guitar amps - I don't know how they sound with speech. I presume that a decent mic wouldn't feed back with the speaker two feet away. I think some of the amps might have a strap and I could wear it around my neck at mid-chest? The mini amp would best have a headphone jack. My wife is severly hearing impaired and a headphone setup would help us talk better driving in the car. Any ideas

Answer:
I'm sorry to hear about your situation and hope you can come up with something that helps. Shure has a useful page explaining how various PA distances relate to how much gain you can get before feedback. See: http://www.shure.com/pdf/booklets/sound.system.design.pdf To get as much volume as you can before feedback, you'll need to get the mic very close to your mouth. So, a headset holding the mic close to your mouth sounds like the right idea. Also, the further you get the loudspeaker from the microphone, and the closer you get it to your listeners, the better off you'll be from a feedback standpoint. To save batteries during portable usage, you ought to consider the efficiency of the amplifier and loudspeaker. Class D amplifiers should be the most efficient ones, but I'm not sure how easy they'll be to find ready-made for your purpose. An efficient PA loudspeaker, like a folded horn, may also save lots of power, but may have such a peaky frequency response that it'll need equalization to improve speech quality and minimize feedback. The only problems that come to mind for the headphone jack are human factors related. I strongly suggest you check with your wife and consider her preferences.