Picture this: you are leading worship on piano and during the first song, the boom arm of your microphone stand slowly starts to move downward. During a musical turnaround between chorus and verse 2, you’re able to move it up quickly again and fasten the arm even tighter. As the worship set continues, you notice it starts to drift downward again, but slower than before. How many times has this happened to you? It doesn’t have to anymore…
Here’s One Of The Best Mic Stands Money Can Buy
I have been working full-time in worship ministry for as long as I can remember. I have toured not only around the United States, but also all over the world supporting worship ministry as an audio engineer. I have been exposed to every design and concept of mic stand created. I have never been this impressed with a mic stand until last month when I was introduced to Sure Foot Mic Stands. I was at a new product expo and, from a distance, I saw a mic stand that had its boom arm extended all the way out, and on the end of it was an 8 pound jug of water. The mic stand did not move a centimeter. It was the most amazing sight I’ve ever seen!
Usually a vocalist on guitar or piano will tighten the joint of the boom arm as tight as it can go, but then someone else comes up a short time later – maybe a different worship leader – and rather than loosening the arm joint and moving the boom to the desired position before retightening it, they just force the boom arm into its new position. Every time this happens, it can strip the gears, weaken grips, and ruin the stand’s ability to hold onto its position.
The Base
There are two basic designs in a standard mic stand base. The base will either be weighted and small or tripod-based using tubing similar to that in the rest of the mic stand. Traditionally, you want to use a tripod base for a boom stand and a weighted base for a straight stand. The base on a Sure Foot mic stand is a combination of both. It is a heavy weighted tripod base that is suitable for both situations. They have two lengths of feet for various applications. For storage, the feet can be folded upward.
The Sure Foot stand has a revolutionary design, all of its moving parts – its feet, straight extension, boom arm, and boom arm extension, are all controlled by a lever. The joint of the boom arm also has a pin system where you can insert a tow pin and it will lock the mic stand in that position forever until the pin is removed. Although the pin is not necessary at all, the lever tightens and loosens in a quarter of a second and is infinitely easier to manipulate than trying to unscrew or screw a hand tightened mechanism. The Sure Foot’s tubing is considerably thicker than the norm, and its hardware is much more heavy duty. It is evident that every aspect of this stand’s design was made by audio engineers who have toured the world and were sick of mic stands that broke easily and could not be repaired or replaced.
Sure Foot VS K&M
I took a Sure Foot mic stand and compared it against a K&M mic stand that I’ve had for a short while. K&M stands are the industry standard for high quality mic stands. I put both stands side-by-side, and put them at the same height, with the boom arm at a 90° angle. Then I put a microphone on both stands. I tightened the K&M mic stand as tight as I could, and I used the standard tension that is given by the lever system on the Sure Foot mic stand. Note: I did not use the pin to lock the Sure Foot in place. I lined up one of the feet of the tripod bases with the boom on both stands (this is optimal on all boom stands regardless of brand), to make sure that the stand did not fall over. The K&M mic stand almost tipped over during this test. The Sure Foot did not. The weighted tripod base gave it greater ability to hold up against long stretches. The crazy thing was that after one minute, the K&M boom had dropped considerably, and after five minutes it had dropped even lower. The Sure Foot? Didn’t drop a centimeter.
This new company is still in its infancy, all stands are made by hand. They are working on machining parts so they can ramp up their operation. These stands will be ready for purchase commercially in the spring of 2016, proudly built in the USA, and best of all, they are at a price point that rivals that of K&M stands. These are going to take the industry by storm. I plan to replace every stand in my facility and personal collection with Sure Foot stands. You can check out their Facebook page, here