Re: headset

[Chris Williams <chrisw@wwa.com>]

Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 00:00:48 -0400
From: Misho Imblum <mlist4+@pitt.edu>
To: rec-music-gaffa@uunet.uu.net
Subject: Re: headset
Message-ID: <34176CF0.3EA5@pitt.edu>
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Misho wrote:
>Chris Williams wrote:
>> 
>>    She did! In the "Kate Bush On Tour" TV film, Kate talks about how
>> she wanted "...something like a telephonist's headset". Her soundman,
>> a Scottish fellow, built it out of a coat hanger and a small tie-tack
>> type microphone. It looks like a Sony ECM-50. It definitly was not
>> off the shelf. I was doing sound at the time, and I believe she was
>> the very first person to use one. I consider Kate the inventor of the
>> performance headset microphone.
>
>I was also working sound when I first saw Kate and her headset.  I
>believe it is pretty much commonly accepted by now that, while Kate
>herself was not the inventor of the headset mic as we know it, she was
>the instigator, and the engineers working with her at the time are
>responsible for its start.  I do hope they are being compensated in some
>way, through patents or whatever.

   It's unlikely that anyone has a patent on it. It's not a basic
idea; it's a modification of an existing idea - the headset microphone.
I haven't been able to find the exact place where kate refered to a
"...telephonist's headset". 

   I believe Kate is the "inventor" of the performance headset 
microphone. She was the person who came up with the idea of 
constructing a headset and it's basic design. That's "invention".
Actually building it is engineering.

   Of course other people in other fields were using headsets
before Kate. But virtually all the headsets available at the
time had limited fidelity and poor characteristics for stage
usage. Countryman and Shure started building headsets a couple
of years after that - first for drummers. Then Madonna used
one on stage...now everyone uses them.