How many mic stands?

I have two boom stands in my dining room studio and 4 in the garage in case I want to mic up live drums.  Most of time I have a vocal mic on one boom and another mic for guitars.  

Rimshot

One tall boom for vocals and one short boom for guitar amp. 

With those 2 I can do everything I need. 

I could actually do it all with one tall boom, but the short one makes the amps easy work.  I can leave the mic set up and ready to go.

Yeh the short Heavy one for cabinets is great and a small foot print
I like to use a couple to mic acoustic guitars-usually run 2 different mics and different positions.

I have 4 - all of 'em booms

On the one hand, no matter how many you have or how varied they are, you can never have enough mic stands.

On the other, while things like short stands and medium-height booms for instruments and cabs are useful, unless the forest of mic stands gets in the way (or would be unsightly if you're playing live) the truth is that standard height boom stands will cover pretty much anything. Plus maybe an instrument-height boom as well.

If you're recording bands then unless you've a large room you'll probably need more variety to keep down the clutter.

As for how many, as many as you need plus one spare is a reasonable starting point. It's more important that they're of good enough quality that they don't lower themselves and the booms don't droop and that they're stable - condensor mics can be heavy things. Isolating their feet from the floor is also a good idea to cut down stand-borne noise and vibrations (e.g. tapping feet).

PS - avoid goosenecks. The useless things never stay where you put them for more than two minutes.

Its really up to you.

One stand for each mic you would use in a session... if you are never going to use more than one mic in a session you wont need any more than one.

If you are using cabs for recording I would recommend a Audix cab grabber they can come in very handy and they come in 2 sizes depending on the size of your cabs http://www.audixusa.com/d...units/CabGrabber.shtml

If you don't have a lot of room it can be easy to nudge or kick a mic stand next to a cab but the Cab grabbers stop that happening.

Mod Bod


I've got 14 or so of various heights and configurations.  I even have one of those super long skyscraper boom stands.  I never know what I'm going to be doing so I like to be prepared.  I've recorded 5 piece bands in my home (garage) studio.  I was glad I had the number I did. 

The short goosenecks aren't so bad.  I've got one to get me into hard to reach places.

Dave, you have more stands then the GC store I visited this weekend. 

I have 14 and a few shorty's. I run out and have to mooch. In my home studio uno. Guitar cab has a shorty in the other room. I'm not allowed to set up the drums (I'm working on it)