Toots used you SM58 Ultra
Hi Greg,
With the recent passing of legendary chromatic harmonica player Toots Thieleman, his music has been playing in my head lately. I also learned from Winslow that Toots was asthmatic.
The comfortable grip of the Shure SM58 aside, the close proximity (fatter sound) feature of this microphone would definetly have benefited Toots with his soft (and fast jazz runs) type of playing. How long did Toots perform with your SM58 Ultra? I'm betting he loved the light weight attribute of your mic. Can you write to us about any of your Toots Thieleman experiences?
Kinya
Beautiful--thank you Greg
Kinya
I found a video you might enjoy:
(The "embed" video works within the editor for this post but doesn't seem to work when I save it. Might have to use the link above. )
Greg took a great mic and made it better. Toots really liked the SM-58. He used to say "It's not hi-fi, but it's my fi." While I've seen photos of him in recording sessions playing through a pop filter into a Neumann condensor mic, the one time I attended a recording session of his (circa 1995) he brought two beat-up 58s, and chose one of them to record with. This was for the LA sessions for the CD East Coast, West Coast.
Hi, KinyaYes, I made two Ultimate 58 mics for Toots in 2011. He very much liked the light weight, but the motivating factor for him was the volume control, as he was getting hard of hearing. It was actually his sound engineer, a man named Chris Weeda, who contacted me and set the whole thing up. I didn't have much direct contact with him, but he did email me this quote:
"My sound engineer (Chris Weeda) introduced me to a new microphone for my harmonica a while ago.Although it takes also a good sound engineer to give you the sound you want to hear on stage, I can say I'm very pleased with the Ultimate 58. It's a very nice, light and comfortable microphone.Thanx Greg," I can also tell you he was directly responsible for getting Hermine Deurloo, a wonderful dutch player, to become a fan of the Ultimate 58 as well.