I will share my experience with using a single mic with my 4 piece acoustic band. I have an AT 4033 and an AT 4050. Although the 4050 might seem to be just a switchable pattern version of the 4033, there is one big difference: the 4050 set to cardioid pattern produces much less feedback than the 4033 with its nonswitchable cardioid pattern. For this reason, I recommend spending the extra dough ($500 vs. $300) to get the 4050. Definitely get a wind sock made special for the brand of mic.

The mic picks up best when standing about an arm's distance away, with the height set chest high. You should try to get all musicians to stand within +/- 60 degrees of straight ahead (total of 120 degrees). If you have a tripod mic stand, the angle between two of the legs serves as a guide. This all translates into bunching pretty close, but not so close as to interfere with three musicians. The bass should either stand behind the other musicians in the middle, or use a separate pickup or mic.

The technique works much better outdoors than indoors due to feedback considerations. When outdoors, you can even use some monitor and still get away without feedback. Indoors, sound bouncing off the back wall of the room comes back to create feedback.

A useful feedback reduction technique is to place the main speakers 45 degrees from straight ahead relative to the microphone, but still pointing straight ahead and separated the usual amount. This places them quite a bit further out front than most people are used to, but it works well. If you place the speakers directly to each side of the mic and band, the feedback becomes a major problem.

The quality of the sound using this setup is excellent, and if you plug a minidisc recorder into the board, you will end up with very near a cd quality recording of your performance.

Hope this helps.

Al Lubanes