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Advice for beginner beat boxer (apologies in advance if you hate beat boxing!)


NotoriousPB

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Posted

My (nearly) 8 year old has been beatboxing for about a year round the house and recently used a mic and PA for the first time and destroyed a beatbox workshop and blew me (and the girl giving it) away with how good he was. Can anyone please give me advice on a rechargeable PA speaker and mic that he could use in his bedroom but also loud enough outside in future years? pref. around £100, second hand is fine.

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Posted

"Rechargeable" is the limiting factor here. If it draws little enough power to work with batteries, then it doesn't provide enough power for decent-sized outside venues.

 

If it must be battery-powered, go to a store and check out the Mackie FreePlay. It pretty much hits the sweet spot for how much volume you can get while still running on batteries. If it's not enough, then you're going to have to consider something with AC power...sorry, it's those pesky laws of physics rearing their ugly heads again!

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Oh, and whether people like beat boxing or not, if that's all someone does it can get pretty old, pretty fast. But to be good enough to work it into other material as appropriate always gets a crowd going.

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Hi Anderton, thanks for the input, I guess to be fair the rechargeable part isn't that important as he is extremely young and not likely to go busking quite yet. Would you say a quality mic eg sm58 and average speaker would trump a quality speaker and average mic or get both in mid range for now?

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For someone that young, Get something like a PG58. The cost is only half and the build and sound quality is nearly a match. I have a couple of PG57's I use for micing guitar amps and not only are they built like tanks which could survive being dropped, (compared to a SM which would have its plastic head shatter) I actually prefer it over SM57's for its recording quality.

 

8 years old is still pretty young. If he gets past puberty and still wants to stick with it make a Christmas present out of a better mic when he'll be less likely to pull a Roger Daltrey and whip the mic around over his head like a lasso and bash it into something :D

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Hi Anderton' date=' thanks for the input, I guess to be fair the rechargeable part isn't that important as he is extremely young and not likely to go busking quite yet. Would you say a quality mic eg sm58 and average speaker would trump a quality speaker and average mic or get both in mid range for now?[/quote']

 

 

For beat boxing, it's not like you need a $4,000 vintage German tube microphone. I'm with WRGKMC about the mic choice, excellent advice. Put the money you save on the mic into a better amplifier.

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Cool, thanks again. I was looking at a beatbox site which was singing the praises of a behringer 8500 ultra voice and only £20. I assume he'll kill a few with saliva overload (does that happen?!) So this would be easier to replace. Thoughts? Also, how much difference in quality is there in leads? Obviously for recording its important to have high quality but for bedroom practice is there much drop off in mid to low range leads? Or have I already answered my question???

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Cool' date=' thanks again. I was looking at a beatbox site which was singing the praises of a behringer 8500 ultra voice and only £20. I assume he'll kill a few with saliva overload (does that happen?!) So this would be easier to replace. Thoughts? Also, how much difference in quality is there in leads? Obviously for recording its important to have high quality but for bedroom practice is there much drop off in mid to low range leads? Or have I already answered my question???[/quote']

 

 

Saliva overload is highly likely. You're not expecting the mic to pick up delicate nuances, so the difference between mics in application probably won't be significant. No one ever died from using a Behringer 8500. Well at least, I don't know of any :)

 

As to the leads (translation for Americans: cables), the main difference in a lower price range will be durability more so than sound quality. When you start paying more, the main improvements are better shielding, often more flexible (lays flatter), gold-plated connectors, etc. So for bedroom practicing, unless he's planning to swing the mic around his head, the cable you use probably won't make an audible difference.

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Great, thanks again. If its gonna be used in the house, do you think maybe Roland cube 10gx would be a good buy? Admittedly a guitar amp rather than vocal but looks like its got a lot of extras for him to experiment with and downloadable amp styles. Would it carry the bass end much though? Bearing in mind he's eight, his nuggets are yet to drop so he struggles to get a rounded bass sound

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The human voice doesn't go low enough for bass response to be a concern. A guitar goes down to around 90 cycles, which is about the lowest possible fundamental tone of the male voice.

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Aaah, OK. Someone today was recommending an acoustic amp rather than one of the Roland electric guitar amps, as they give a more pure sound. I was thinking the Roland would be good due to the downloadable amp styles which he could experiment with. Would he be able to use these with a mic, or are they just for the guitar input?

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