Most of what goes wrong when a harp is miked is the position, not the microphone. The instrument is five feet of radiating soundboard and forty-odd strings that do not become a harp until they have had some air to combine in, so a capsule two feet from the strings is not recording the harp — it is recording one region of it, usually the boomy one.
Where it goes depends on what else is making a noise. Alone in a room, the microphone belongs a long way back and high up. In an orchestra it belongs at the top of the pillar, angled down. On a loud stage it belongs on the instrument itself, an inch from the wood. Those are the three positions, and choosing between them costs nothing.
On-Stage MS7701B Euro Boom Stand
A harp wants the capsule at hand height and several feet back, and a short stand is why the microphone ends up three feet from the strings instead. Five feet of column and a thirty-inch boom costs about the same as a set of strings and improves the sound more than any microphone on this page.
The kit at a glance
| Gear | What it is | Price band | Position it serves |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-Stage MS7701B | Tripod boom stand, 32″–61.5″, 30″ boom | ~$32 | All of them — it is what makes distance and height possible |
| Shure SM81-LC | Small-diaphragm cardioid condenser, switchable rolloff | ~$440 | Six feet back in a room, or a spot at the pillar |
| Behringer ECM8000 | True omnidirectional condenser, 48 V phantom | ~$26 | Distant in a room worth hearing |
| Myers Pickups The Feather | Gooseneck omni mic, built-in preamp, suction and clip mount | ~$225 | Half an inch off the soundboard on a loud stage |
Three jobs, three positions
Where the microphone goes depends on one thing: whether anything else in the room is making a noise. On its own, a harp wants distance. In an ensemble, it wants a close directional microphone that hears the harp and not the cellos. On a stage with a band and a monitor pointed at you, it wants to be inside the instrument. Those are three different sounds, and none of them is a compromise version of the others.
Alone: back off, and get the stand up
A harp is not a point source. Forty-odd strings and a soundboard nearly five feet long all radiate at once, and they need a couple of metres of air to become the instrument you hear from the bench. The working rule is to stand off at least as far as the harp is tall — around six and a half feet for a concert grand, four and a half for a lever harp on legs — with the capsule at the height of the player’s hands, aimed at the middle of the string band.
The part that catches people out is the stand rather than the microphone. Four feet of height at six feet of distance is a tall boom, not a desk tripod, and a short stand is why the microphone ends up three feet from the strings by default. Our guide to recording a harp at home goes further into distance, room and what to record onto.
In an ensemble: the top of the pillar, pointing down
When a main stereo pair is already capturing the group, the harp gets a spot microphone to lift it out of the texture, and distance is no longer available — the further back it goes the more of the orchestra it collects. The starting position that works is level with the top of the pillar, the tall front post, angled down across the strings towards the soundboard. From up there the microphone is looking at the whole compass at an angle instead of at one region of the board head on, which is what keeps it out of the boom.
The rule of thumb is that the more isolated the harp is, the less directional the microphone needs to be. A harp sitting alone at the back of a section can take a wide pattern and some distance. A harp wedged between the percussion and the second violins needs a tight cardioid close in, and you accept the tone you lose for the spill you keep out.
If you can spare two channels, a useful pair is one microphone directly behind the instrument facing the soundboard from about a foot away, and a second at the same distance but level with the strings. Mix the upper one roughly twice as loud as the lower and you get the attack of the fingers with enough body underneath it to sound like a harp rather than a zither.
On a stage: onto the instrument
Distance is not available on a stage and neither is a quiet room, so the microphone goes onto the harp: a miniature capsule on a short flexible gooseneck, held on by a soft suction cup or a clip. Within an inch of the instrument the harp is so much louder than everything else that the monitor stops mattering, and there is no stand to be knocked over on a crowded stage. It moves when the harp moves and it stays where you set it between numbers.
There are two places to put it. Round the back, the soundbox carries a row of oval holes — the ones you reach through to change strings — and a capsule set into the second one up from the bottom hears the body of the instrument working. On the front, the gooseneck can hold the capsule half an inch off the soundboard, level with the middle of the strings. The back is warmer and harder to make feed back; the front is more articulate and gets more of the fingers.
Either way, height on the instrument is the control that matters. Too low and the bass strings dominate; too high and it thins out. The gooseneck exists so you can point the capsule in, angle it along the board, or pull it back into the air, each of which is a different amount of low end — so set it, play the full compass through the system, move it an inch, and do it again before you decide the microphone is the problem.
If the bottom of the instrument is still overwhelming everything above it, plug one or two of the lowest sound holes with a piece of foam. It is a crude fix and it works, because what you are damping is a cabinet resonance rather than the strings themselves.
Cardioid or omni
A cardioid microphone hears mostly what is in front of it, and it gets bassier the closer it gets — the proximity effect, which is a feature on a voice and a problem on an instrument that already has too much low end when you crowd it. An omnidirectional capsule has no proximity effect at all and generally a flatter, more natural response, which is why it is the classical default and why the harp placement guidance published by microphone manufacturers is written around omni capsules.
The catch is that an omni hears the room in every direction with no way to turn any of it down. It is a reward for a good room rather than a fix for a bad one, and on a stage it is close to unusable, because a pattern with no rear rejection and a monitor behind it is a feedback loop with a microphone in the middle. So the honest split is: omni when the harp is alone in a room worth hearing, cardioid everywhere else.
Diaphragm size matters less than people expect on this instrument, but it is not nothing. A small-diaphragm pencil condenser holds its pattern consistently off-axis, which is what you want on something five feet tall being covered by one capsule at an angle. A large diaphragm is quieter and flatters the tone, and it narrows as the frequency rises, so the top of the harp goes dull if the strings are not more or less in front of it.
What a harp does to a microphone
Three things about the instrument decide all of that, and they are worth knowing rather than rediscovering one microphone position at a time.
The sound field runs vertically. Long bass strings at one end of the soundboard, short trebles at the other, and almost nothing spread left to right. Pulling two microphones wide apart therefore captures the room rather than the instrument — a harp does not image in stereo the way a piano does. If you want two capsules to cover the instrument itself, stack them vertically rather than spreading them.
The soundboard is loud in patches. It does not vibrate as one piece; it flexes in different patterns at different pitches, so a capsule a few inches away is hearing one region of an instrument that has several. That is the real reason close microphones sound wrong on a harp, and the reason a single close microphone always favours one part of the range over another. Angling in from the top of the pillar, or getting far enough back for the regions to combine, are the two ways out of it.
There is a cabinet resonance in the low mids. A pedal harp has a strong fundamental and a lump somewhere around 180 Hz that a directional microphone close in will exaggerate until the instrument sounds like it is playing inside a wardrobe. Move the microphone before you reach for the EQ; a narrow cut there is the fix of last resort, not first.
Feedback, and why a microphone is the harder path
A harp is a large, light, hollow box built to resonate, sitting a few feet from a loudspeaker. That is the definition of a feedback problem, and it is why most working harpists gig with a pickup rather than a microphone — a transducer bolted to the soundboard is deaf to the room, and amplifying a harp that way is the easier evening.
If it has to be a microphone, the order to fix it in is position, then phase, then EQ. Get the capsule onto the instrument rather than out in the air in front of it. Put the speaker several feet to the side and angled across the room rather than behind you into the back of the instrument, and get it up off the floor. Use the phase switch if there is one, which flips the signal against itself and kills a howl outright at no cost to the tone. Only then start pulling frequencies out, because every cut you make is sound you do not get back.
The noises a microphone finds that you do not
Pedals clunk, levers click, and a hand stopping a wire-wound bass string squeaks. The player stopped hearing all three years ago and a microphone has not. Where the microphone goes decides which of them you get. Up at the pillar it is level with the neck, so it hears every lever; down at the sound holes it is nearest the body and the pedal action at the base; six feet away it hears all of it more quietly but in the same proportion, which is why distance is not the cure people expect it to be.
Buzzes are the ones to deal with before the microphone goes up rather than after, because nothing removes them later. A string sitting badly in its slot, a lever not quite clearing, a loose bolt in the column — all of them survive everything you can do to a recording. If a buzz arrived with a recent string change, that is where to look first, and changing harp strings covers the seating. Tune before you record, too, not approximately: sympathetic strings make a harp far less forgiving of one flat note than an instrument with six strings, and there is a proper way to tune a harp.
What to put up
On-Stage MS7701B Euro Boom Stand
- 32″–61.5″ height
- 30″ boom arm
- 23″ tripod base spread
- 5/8″-27 thread
- Folds flat
- ~$32
Every position on this page needs the capsule at about the height of the player’s hands and several feet away from the strings, and that combination is what a desk tripod cannot do. Five feet of column with a thirty-inch boom on top reaches over the instrument without the legs ending up under the harp, and the wide base is what stops it going over when someone walks past it in a dark church.
Nothing else here except the omni costs less, and none of the microphones changes the sound as much as putting one of them in the right place does. If you already own a microphone and your recordings sound boxy, this is almost certainly the purchase rather than a better capsule.
- Tall enough for a pedal harp at a proper distance
- Boom reaches out over the instrument, legs stay clear
- Wide base, which matters on a stage full of cables
- Costs less than a set of harp strings
- Steel and heavy for its size
- The clip supplied with your microphone may need an adapter
- Not the stand for a heavy large-diaphragm microphone at full boom extension
Shure SM81-LC
- Small-diaphragm cardioid condenser
- 20 Hz – 20 kHz
- Low-frequency switch: flat, 6 or 18 dB/octave
- Lockable 0/10 dB attenuator
- Swivel adapter, windscreen and case included
- ~$440
Two things make this the harp microphone rather than merely a good one. Its cardioid pattern stays consistent off-axis, which matters when a single capsule is covering five feet of soundboard from an angle at the top of the pillar — a pattern that narrows with frequency puts the treble strings outside it. And the low-frequency switch gives you two rolloff slopes at the capsule, which is the correct place to deal with the cabinet resonance rather than three plug-ins later.
It works at six feet in a room, at the pillar as a spot microphone, and behind the instrument as one half of a pair. The thing it cannot do is go inside a sound hole, so a harpist whose problem is a loud stage is buying the wrong microphone. The price is the honest objection: it is a professional microphone and it costs like one, and if you are recording at home the cheaper condensers in our home recording guide get you most of the way.
- Pattern holds its shape off-axis, so one capsule covers the whole compass
- Rolloff switch tackles the harp’s low-mid lump before it is recorded
- Quiet enough for soft playing at a distance
- Works in every position here except inside the instrument
- Costs more than everything else on this page put together
- Cardioid, so it still gains bass if you crowd the soundboard
- One microphone, so stereo means buying two
Behringer ECM8000
- True omnidirectional electret condenser
- 20 Hz – 20 kHz, within about 2 dB
- Needs 15–48 V phantom power
- Self-noise around 22 dBA
- Clip and case included
- ~$26
Omnidirectional capsules are the classical default on harp because they have no proximity effect at all — the whole business of the instrument getting boomy as the microphone approaches simply does not happen. This one is a measurement microphone, built flat for tuning rooms rather than for making records, and flat is exactly what a distant omni placement wants.
What twenty-six dollars costs you is the noise floor. Around 22 dBA is fine on a full glissando and audible as a soft hiss under a quiet passage six feet away, which is the one thing a harp does more than most instruments. Treat it as the cheapest possible answer to “would an omni sound better in this room”, and a genuinely useful second microphone underneath a cardioid rather than the only one you own.
- No proximity effect, so distance is a free choice rather than a correction
- Flat response with nothing added to the tone
- Cheap enough to own alongside a directional microphone
- Audible self-noise under quiet playing
- No rejection at all, so it is unusable near a monitor
- Needs phantom power from an interface or recorder
- Rewards a good room and punishes a bad one
Myers Pickups The Feather — Concert Harp
- Miniature omnidirectional capsule
- Flexible micro-gooseneck
- Active preamp built in, no phantom power
- 1″ soft rubber suction mount and saddle clip
- 1/4″ output with a volume knob
- ~$225
This is what makes the stage position possible. The capsule is small enough to sit half an inch off the soundboard, the gooseneck bends it to point into a sound hole or up across the board, and the whole thing is held on by a one-inch soft rubber suction cup or a clip — nothing glued, nothing drilled, and nothing left behind when it comes off. The preamp is inside the unit, so it goes straight into an amp or a desk with no phantom power and no direct box.
The capsule is omnidirectional, and that is the honest catch. At half an inch the harp is so much louder than the room that the pattern barely matters, but there is no rear rejection to fall back on, so it gives up before a soundboard transducer would if the monitors come up. Myers list a version per harp type rather than one model with adapters, so order the one named for your instrument. If what you want is the simplest possible amplified rig rather than a microphone, a pickup and a small acoustic amp is the easier evening and about the same money.
- Puts a real microphone where a harpist would normally have to accept a pickup
- Suction cup and clip, so nothing is adhered to or drilled into the instrument
- Preamp built in — no phantom power, no direct box, no second gadget
- Repositioning it is a two-second job, so the tone is adjustable during a soundcheck
- Omnidirectional, so it feeds back earlier than a transducer does
- Seven times the price of the stand and it only solves the one position
- Close in, it hears every lever click and pedal change
- Listed per harp type, so the version has to match the instrument
Common questions
One microphone or two?
One, unless you have a reason. A harp carries very little horizontal stereo information, so the second capsule mostly buys you the room rather than the instrument, and it brings a phase relationship to get wrong. Two earn their place in an ensemble, where a top-and-bottom pair covers a five-foot soundboard better than any single position does.
Can I put a microphone right up against the soundboard?
You can, and it gives you a thick, boomy sound with a hump in the bass and low mids. It is useful as one ingredient mixed quietly underneath a distant microphone, and poor on its own. If what you want from close placement is detail rather than weight, go to the top of the pillar and look down across the strings instead — that gets you the fingers without the box.
Does it matter whether it is a lever harp or a pedal harp?
For distance and for mechanism noise, yes. A pedal harp is taller, so it needs more air between it and the capsule, it has a stronger bass resonance, and its pedal action is much louder than a lever click. A lever harp is small enough that four or five feet is plenty and quiet enough that the mechanism is a minor problem. The rest of the differences are in lever harp vs pedal harp.
The venue says they will mic me. What should I ask for?
Time, mostly. Ask to be set and checked before the room fills, because a harp behaves differently with sixty people absorbing the top end. Ask for the monitor to your side rather than in front of you, and ask for it low. If they arrive with a vocal microphone on a short stand pointed at your soundboard from two feet, ask instead for a capsule on the instrument, or for the stand to go back and up.
Is a microphone better than a pickup?
It sounds better and behaves worse. A microphone hears air moving, which is what a harp actually sounds like; a soundboard transducer hears wood moving, which is drier and more direct. In a quiet room the microphone wins easily. In a loud one the pickup wins, because it cannot feed back and it does not care about the conversation at the bar.
So what actually goes up
If the harp is alone in a decent room, one capsule at hand height, six feet back, on a stand tall enough to put it there. If it is one instrument among many, a cardioid at the top of the pillar angled down across the strings, as close as isolation demands and no closer. If it is a stage with a monitor on it, a miniature capsule on the instrument itself — second sound hole from the bottom for warmth, half an inch off the soundboard for articulation — and foam in the lowest holes if the bass runs away.
Get the position right with whatever you already own before you buy anything. A borrowed microphone in the correct place beats a good one in the wrong one, on this instrument more than on most, and the whole of the rest of it is a stand and about twenty minutes of moving things an inch at a time.