Barbecue Bob talks from facts and well earned opinion grown from

years of touring and harp playing.



I have some highlights from the article below on Bluesharp.org



www.bluesharp.org/ampseffectsandmore.html#HarpMicsArticle   :



I made a quick visit to bar-b-que Bob's articles and frankly,I'm quite
surprised to hear what he has to say.A jt30 has more bottom end than any
Shure bullet?I don't know where he's getting his jt's but I've heard alot of
them and never heard one with a bottom that can come close to that of a
bullet.On paper it may look that way considering Astatic says the freq.
response is 30Hz to 10KHz. and the Shure's are 100Hz to 7kHz.It has been my
experience that the jt30's have way more high end but low end?And about the
grille's changing the tone?That was when Astatic started mass producing the
mics so the castings started to get less  attention to detail,you can
see that in all the burrs and imperfections in the grills of the ones made
from sometime in the late 70's or 80's on.The old ones were carefully casted
and deburred before being chromed.The only physical difference is the
spacing between the grilles.The older ones have larger spacing between the
grille's,and the in!
ner rim was changed to accomidate a thicker element holder on the newer
ones.Same goes for the elements.Mass production killed the sound of the mics
with cheaper and lower quality crystals.I'll be honest,I'm not a big fan of
the jt30 sound.I like the shells,but not the sound.Thats just my opinion.I
know they have their place and are prefered by many players.Heck I even own
two of them,an early 40's jt31,and a newer one.

       I personally prefer the Shure
CR mics.All of my other mics,about 10,have the black label CR's in
them.About half of them are in Jt30 shells.They sound very good in them.

       If you judge mics by what you
see on paper and charts,you'll never really know how they sound in any given
application.I've never heard a Jt30 with the bottom end that a Shure bullet
has.For that matter,I ve never heard a bullet with the high end that a Jt30
has although they claim to be very close in freq. response at the high
end.And the human ear can't hear frequency's below 50Hz,especially when you
start putting on some years,so I think it's nuts to say a jt30 crystal is
capable of producing frequency's that low.

        I haven't done much
research on Astatics because they don't appeal to me,but I know that the
quality of the Jt30's went way down when they put the push on them and
started mass producing them.Anyone who's had some old and some new can
obviously see and hear the difference.

        I know about Shure
mics.I've done extensive research on them over the past 10 years.I got alot
of my info from guys that have since retired from Shure.Its too bad they
didn't keep better records on their older mics.There are quite a few you
can't get any info on,but I was able to get alot of valuable info on the
green bullet mics and the various magnetic elements.I'm working on putting
up a website to share the info I've collected on them like how to date
them,the different model #'s on the elements,freq.
responses,applications,etc.I will post it on harp-l when its
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