Smallrig clamps

[swarfrat]

I haven't seen these in musician circles but I was looking for an adjustable ball clamp dealie and saw these at in use at my mom's church. They're small, cheap, and lock down. (Cheap surprised me - they come from the photography world).

They seem to be almost all 1/4-20 so to put a mic clamp on one you need a 1/4-20 to 5/8-27 (not the normal 3/8-16 adapter)

Amazon has them but they're much cheaper on eBay. (The Tama RW has a 6mm thread - it's just kinda stopped at the first thread until I can tap or find a 1/4-20F to M6M adapter) I'm using it to clamp my metronome (and Peterson Bodybeat Pulse - awesome bit of kit) at my "practice singing into a microphone while playing guitar station)

They make a bunch of other stuff but the 2" dog bone, the 5" arm and 9.5" arm are probably the most useful for us.

( I don't really care if you guys see my mess but you can't see the black hardware against a busy background)

There's about $20 in that clamp and I could probably do it for $13 without the extra ball joint I added trying to figure things out

 

[loudboy]

I just got a few to use on light stands, for the band. I think I paid $10 for 2?

I built some small (3"x3"x6") boxes, w/2 GU10 LED lamps, one set to white, the other set to color roll, in each. They each weigh about 1 lb. and work great to light us up.

Got some T-Nuts and away we go.

 

[suthol]

I was looking for an adjustable ball clamp

I'd hate to imagine what else the search engine suggested.

 

[swarfrat]

Personalized search results these days I guess.

 

[Ben Harmless]

You found my secret weapon!

These clamps are the best thing since sliced bread. Any stand can easily become a stereo mount. I've used them a lot by clamping to tabletops, chairs, and other things. They're way stronger than they need to be to hold the heaviest mics. Cheap too. You can get direct 1/4-20 to 5/8 adapters from Amazon for both gender connections. The clamps also have 3/8 holes, which I believe is the European standard, and there are a lot of those adapters around, so you have options.

Another thing you can do with them is use them to mount extra hardware for fine positioning. Take a look at this tutorial that someone put together. For a couple of bucks in the fastener isle you can create durable, but adjustable articulated joints that can still hold up most mics and other gear. Honestly, they're tougher than most of the photography-oriented ball joints. I also use all this stuff to hold phone and tablet mounts and things.

I'm really surprised that you don't see these things in every studio everywhere.

 

[swarfrat]

I'm in the middle of setting up a funky hybrid drum set. Electronic bass/Multipad for toms. I can record a real snare or use the snare pad (when wife/kids are home). I loathe rubber cymbals though, so I'm playing L80's. I'm setting up an experiment with close micing them to trigger/replace. Sound quality doesn't matter except to trigger. So if I get a nasty ride bell harmonic who cares. Even better if it's a different frequency from the crash.

But what I'm finding so far is that time of arrival appears to be more useful than rejection for differentiating crash/hats/ride. So I'm using the arms to great advantage trying to get as much separation between mics as I can while still being stupidly close. For this they're absolutely indispensable. In fact I think I need another arm for my crash. And when the Zoom Q2n-4k gets here...