Live amplification

REC-09How do I amplify a handpan on stage?#

intermediate

Short answer. Either a microphone on a stand above the instrument, or a small pickup attached to the shell. Microphones sound better, pickups survive loud stages. Many players use both and blend them.

The handpan is a quiet instrument with a long decay, played by someone whose hands are busy and who often moves while playing. That combination makes amplification harder than it looks. A guitar has a fixed body, a fixed relationship to its pickup and a player who can stand still. A handpan sits on a stand, radiates in every direction from a curved surface, and gets leaned over.

The three broad approaches:

Microphone only. One or two condensers on a boom above and slightly behind the instrument, roughly 25 to 50 cm away. This is what a listening-room gig, a house concert or a theatre wants. It gives you the whole instrument, the air and the gu. It also gives you the drum kit, the monitors and the room, and it caps how loud you can go before feedback.

Pickup only. A contact or miniature condenser element attached to the shell, usually near the gu or on the underside. It hears mostly the instrument and almost nothing of the stage, so gain before feedback is enormous. It also sounds less like a handpan: tighter, more mid-focused, less air. On a loud stage this is the trade you make.

Both, blended. A pickup for the body and level, a microphone for the top end and realism, mixed together and with the microphone pulled down as the stage gets louder. This is what most touring acoustic players do on other instruments, and it works here. The two sources must be checked for polarity, and the small time difference between them can cause phasiness, so most small mixers or preamps with a phase switch are worth having.

Whatever you choose, get it on a proper stand with the instrument fixed at your normal playing height. Mic and pickup positions that were set at soundcheck stop being correct the moment you sit differently.

A final practical point: give the sound engineer a warning. Many engineers have never mixed a handpan, will assume it is a steel drum, and will reach for the same processing they use on a snare. Ask for a light touch, and expect to spend more of the soundcheck on monitors than on front of house.

See also: REC-10, REC-12

REC-10Pickup or microphone: which should I use live?#

intermediate

Short answer. Microphone if the stage is quiet and the audience is listening. Pickup if the stage is loud, you move, or feedback has already bitten you. The decision is about the room, not about sound quality in the abstract.

What a microphone gives you. The real instrument: the attack, the shimmer above 8 kHz, the breath of the gu, the acoustic bloom. Nothing else sounds like it. A condenser 30 cm above the instrument on a quiet stage is close to a studio capture.

What a microphone costs you. Gain before feedback. Every dB you add to the PA also gets picked up again by that open microphone. It hears the monitors, the drummer, the audience and the air conditioning. It restricts where you and the speakers can stand. And if you lean forward over the instrument, the balance changes.

What a pickup gives you. Isolation and headroom. A contact element responds to vibration in the shell, not to sound in the room, so a loud stage barely reaches it. You can move the instrument, you can point wedges wherever, and the level stays stable. It also solves the busking case, where wind and traffic destroy a microphone signal.

What a pickup costs you. Air and space. Contact sensors read the shell, so you get a stronger, more direct mid-band and less of the top-end shimmer and less of the natural bloom. Cheap piezos in particular sound brittle and quacky unless they are fed into a properly high-impedance input. Anything stuck to the shell also adds a small mass and slightly damps that spot, and it needs mounting in a way that does not mark the instrument.

Practical guidance by situation.

• Solo house concert, yoga studio, small listening room: microphone.
• Support slot, festival stage, band with drums: pickup, or pickup with a microphone blended low.
• Busking with a battery PA: pickup, unless it is a genuinely still day in a sheltered spot.
• Recording live for release: microphones, plus a pickup track as an insurance policy.

If you buy one thing, and you play mostly quiet gigs, buy the microphone. If you buy one thing and you play with other musicians, buy the pickup. Neither is a compromise you will regret if it matches your gigs.

See also: REC-11

REC-11What types of handpan pickup exist, and how do they mount without damaging the instrument?#

intermediate

Short answer. Three families: piezo contact transducers, miniature electret condenser elements attached to the shell, and clip-on gooseneck microphones. All of the sensible mounting methods are removable and adhesive-based. Never drill a handpan.

Miniature condenser systems made for the job. Ischell, a French manufacturer, make systems specifically marketed for handpan, including single-capsule models such as the C2BHP and C3BHP and multi-capsule systems such as the X48C and X48JC. They use small electret capsules attached to the instrument with removable adhesive putty or removable tape, run on phantom power, and output on XLR. These are the closest thing to a purpose-built standard in the handpan world, and they are priced accordingly, generally in the low to mid hundreds of euros.

Piezo contact transducers. A ceramic disc that senses vibration in whatever it is stuck to. The AKG C411 is a widely used contact pickup that mounts with a proprietary putty-like adhesive and is available with XLR phantom power (C411 PP) or a mini-XLR connector for wireless packs (C411 L). Fishman’s SBT series soundboard transducers are designed for guitar tops but are cheap and are commonly repurposed. Piezos need a very high impedance input, typically 1 MΩ or more, to avoid sounding thin and quacky.

Clip-on gooseneck condensers. Small condensers on a flexible arm, such as the Myers Pickups Feather series, sold in variants for a range of acoustic instruments. These are technically microphones rather than pickups, so they sound more natural but give less feedback rejection, and mounting one takes improvisation since none is designed for a domed steel shell.

Mounting, and what not to do.

Reusable, plasticine-like adhesive putty is the standard mounting method and is what several manufacturers supply. It holds well, comes off cleanly and changes nothing permanently. Removable double-sided tape works but can leave residue and, on a nitrided carbon steel instrument, can lift the finish if pulled off carelessly.

Magnets are tempting on a steel instrument. They will hold, but a magnet dragged across the surface scratches the finish, and a magnet on a tone field adds mass and audibly damps it. If you use one, use it on the bottom shell away from any tuned area, and lift it straight off rather than sliding it.

Two genuine risks are worth naming. First, anything stuck on a tone field damps that note; mount on the bottom shell, near the gu or on the rim area rather than on the playing surface. Second, moisture trapped under putty or tape against carbon steel can start corrosion. Take the pickup off after gigs, wipe the spot, and check it periodically.

Never drill, bolt, glue permanently or clamp a handpan. Any of these will change the tuning and destroy the resale value.

See also: Care and maintenance, REC-13

REC-12How do I stop feedback when I amplify a handpan?#

advanced

Short answer. Increase the ratio of instrument to speaker at the microphone. Get the mic closer, get the speakers further away and pointed elsewhere, use directional patterns, high-pass aggressively, and notch out the one or two frequencies that ring before you touch the master fader.

Feedback happens when sound from the speakers arrives back at the microphone loud enough to be re-amplified. Handpans make it worse in two ways: the instrument is quiet so you need high gain, and it sustains, so a ringing feedback tone hides inside a note that is already ringing until it is too late.

The interventions, in the order they are worth trying:

Reduce the distance to the source. Halving the microphone-to-instrument distance gives you about 6 dB more instrument at the same gain. Moving from 60 cm to 30 cm is a bigger win than most other steps combined.

Move the speakers. Front of house speakers should be in front of the microphone’s null, meaning downstage of you, not level with you. If the PA is behind the mic line, you will never win. On small stages, physically walking the speaker stands a metre forward often solves the entire problem.

Fix the monitoring. Wedges are the usual culprit. A cardioid microphone rejects best directly behind it, so put the wedge exactly behind the microphone, not at 45 degrees. A hypercardioid rejects best at about 120 degrees off axis, not directly behind, so its null is in a different place. In-ear monitors remove the problem entirely and are the single most effective upgrade for a handpan player who gigs regularly.

High-pass and low-cut. Roll off below 60 to 80 Hz on the handpan channel. There is almost nothing musical down there and plenty of stage rumble that eats headroom.

Ring out the system. At soundcheck, raise gain slowly until you hear the first ring, notch that frequency with a narrow parametric cut of a few dB, and repeat once or twice. Two or three narrow notches typically buy 6 to 9 dB. Do not go past three or four: you will start hearing the damage.

Change the source. If none of that is enough, the honest answer is that the stage is too loud for an open microphone and you need a pickup. That is not a failure, it is the correct tool.

Automatic feedback suppressors exist and work, but they chase the problem after it starts, which on a sustaining instrument means you hear the beginning of every squeal.

See also: REC-10

REC-13Do I need a DI box, a preamp or an EQ?#

intermediate

Short answer. You need something that matches your source to the PA input. A phantom-powered XLR pickup or microphone can go straight to a mixer. A bare piezo needs an active DI or preamp with a high impedance input, or it will sound thin and brittle.

Impedance is the thing people get wrong. Piezo elements have very high output impedance. Plug one into a typical mixer line input or a passive DI, which presents a relatively low impedance load, and the low frequencies collapse. The result is the classic quacky piezo sound, which players then blame on the pickup. An active DI or a preamp with an input impedance of 1 MΩ or higher, and preferably several megohms, fixes it before any EQ is involved. Many acoustic instrument preamps are designed exactly for this.

Phantom powered systems are simpler. Purpose-built handpan systems that terminate in XLR and expect 48 V phantom, such as the Ischell models, can be plugged straight into any mixer channel. No DI required. Confirm with the engineer that phantom will be on for your channel and that it will not be switched off mid-set when someone patches something else.

Microphones need a mic preamp, which every mixer has. Condensers need phantom. Nothing exotic.

Do you need EQ? A little. A useful starting shape for live handpan:

• High-pass filter at 60 to 80 Hz.
• A gentle cut, 2 to 4 dB and fairly wide, somewhere between 200 and 400 Hz to remove boxiness. Sweep to find it in the room rather than dialling it in blind.
• Optional small lift around 6 to 10 kHz for shimmer, but only if you are using a pickup that lost it. Microphones rarely need this and it makes feedback more likely.
• Whatever narrow notches ringing out the system produced.

Avoid: heavy midrange scoops, which hollow the instrument; broad low boosts, which invite mud and stage rumble; and gates, which chop the decay.

A minimal purchase order for a player who is building a rig would be: a good cable, then an active acoustic DI or preamp with a high impedance input and a phase switch, then EQ, then anything else. The phase switch is more useful than it sounds when you are blending a pickup with a microphone.

See also: REC-14

REC-14What does a simple gigging rig actually look like?#

beginner

Short answer. For a supported gig: instrument, stand, pickup or microphone, one cable, and the house PA. For a self-contained gig: add a battery-powered PA speaker with a mixer built in. Almost everything else is optional.

Tier one, playing into a house PA. Handpan on a stand, pickup mounted, XLR to the stage box, done. You bring the pickup, a spare XLR cable, adhesive putty, and a note of what power your system needs. Total additional weight, about a kilogram. This is what most players who gig regularly actually carry.

Tier two, small self-contained. A battery-powered portable PA that includes microphone and instrument inputs. The Roland CUBE Street EX and the Bose S1 Pro are the two that come up most often among street and small-venue players, and both run on internal batteries. Either takes your pickup or a microphone directly. Add a speaker stand if the venue is more than a handful of people, because getting the box above head height improves clarity far more than turning it up does.

Tier three, small band or looping rig. Pickup and microphone into a compact mixer or a two-channel acoustic preamp, out to a looper and any effects, then to a powered speaker or to front of house. This is where a phase switch, a proper EQ and a tuner-style mute become worth having.

The list of things that are always in the bag, regardless of tier:

• Spare XLR cable and a spare jack cable. Cables fail more than anything else.
• Spare adhesive putty and a microfibre cloth.
• Gaffer tape.
• A torch or head torch, for packing down.
• Spare batteries or a power bank for anything battery powered.
• A short DI or an adaptor, in case the venue is not what you were told.

Things people buy and rarely need early on: wireless systems, multi-effects units, in-ear packs, a second speaker for stereo. Stereo in particular is romantic and mostly wasted, because only the few people standing in the middle hear it.

Set-up time matters more than specification. A rig you can deploy in five minutes gets used; a rig with fourteen patch cables stays at home.

See also: REC-16, ENS-10