Episode 83: Podcast Equipment: The Travel Rig
In this episode, we dive into The Travel Rig that Nick bought for recording interviews and group panels at conferences or events. If you want to learn more about on-the-road podcasting hardware, listen to this one. (A ‘nuts and bolts’ episode)
Summary
Nick walks through his ~$1,000 travel podcast rig piece by piece: two Shure Beta 87A supercardioid mics, a Zoom H6 recorder, cables, adapters, and a Klein Tools bag to hold it all. The episode also covers Kai’s tactic of using podcast interviews to attract clients, and ends on why spending real money on gear up front tends to be cheaper per year than buying cheap and replacing.
Highlights
- The full rig: two Shure Beta 87A supercardioid mics at roughly $250 each, a Zoom H6 recorder with four XLR inputs, two three-foot XLR cables, a Manfrotto mini tripod, Anker USB power, AA battery backup, a 64GB SD card, and a Klein Tools canvas bag for all of it. Total came in under $1,000, barely.
- Supercardioid mics pick up a very narrow field. Nick demos this live during the episode: speaking from the side drops volume noticeably, and background noise like hotel AC or hallway foot traffic is largely cut without post-production.
- Kai uses podcast interviews as a client-attraction system. Reaching out with ‘can I interview you?’ gets past gatekeepers, and the conversation naturally opens a door to talk about the guest’s business problems, which is easier to transition into a real sales conversation than a cold pitch.
- Both call this a 200-to-300-level tactic. Nick is explicit that beginners should skip it entirely.
- Nick disagrees that good content compensates for weak audio: ‘A good podcast lives or dies on good audio quality.’ He says C-grade audio is not an acceptable floor, and he points to his own delay in launching a podcast as proof that bad audio is a real barrier.
- A ~$200 budget is a workable entry point. Swapping in a Rode Podcaster and Zoom H4 saves about $500 off Nick’s build but adds room noise and cuts XLR ports from four to two.
- Kai applies the Sam Vimes boots theory from Discworld: Nick’s $1,000 rig over 10 years is $8 a month. Kai draws the same frame on a handcrafted wood bed frame he just ordered, arguing upfront cost is the wrong unit to judge a long-horizon purchase by.
Read the transcript
So, I bought a travel rig recently, and we’re recording it on this. I wanted to talk a little bit about what it is that I got and why. So, I’m just going to go through the whole fucking list of everything.
Going to look pretty and ask questions.
Look pretty and ask questions. Okay, so my microphone is a Sure Beta 87A. It’s a supercardioid pickup. And I bought two of them. They’re about 250 new. You should probably buy your microphones new for not only like did you know you usually can’t resell your microphones for like health reasons because you’re speaking into them and like Thank you, Kai. Thank you. And yes, so there’s that. So I bought two of those. One of them is my usual home rig, and I just go and pack it and carry it with me. So there’s that. There’s two XLR cables. You don’t really need fancy XLR cables. Just make sure that they’re thick enough. I buy two three feet ones so that they can sit on a table pretty easily. I bought a Manfrado tripod. That’s just this tiny mini tripod that goes underneath the recorder. The recorder is a Zoom H6 handy recorder. It is it has four XLR mic inputs. So if you want to add on like a third interview guest or like a even a table of people or something like that, you can attach two more microphones, buy as many of these as you really want. And it comes with its own little flight case and its own like room microphones and stuff like that, so you can record ambient crowd noise if you’re podcasting in front of an entire group, something like that, has pass-through line outs so that you can send it to a mixing desk and then they can send it to like a public address system, something like that. I bought an Anker 10-foot long USB to micro USB cable and a tiny micro USB to mini USB connector that I just have permanently connected on there. to give power to the zoom. I also have four AA batteries in case I need to punt back to uh battery power for this thing. The dumb thing about the Zoom H6, they don’t have like an internal rechargeable battery for it, and I would really prefer to just charge it and go. Um but I would rather have like a wall outlet anyway. I have a two port Anker USB uh travel adapter that I just have sitting inside of a Klein Tools bag. I have like a half dozen of these Klein Tools bags. They’re just canvas zipper bags. And so I have one that’s for when I’m speaking at a conference and it’s got all of my video stuff. And a presenter remote. And then I have one for all of my international travel that has my passport in it and a SIM card. And usually it’s like a long-haul flight, so I have a sleep mask in there, melatonin pills, and stuff like that. So that’s how I travel. So when I travel with this, I have the Klein Tools bag, a separate bag for the two microphones, because they’re precious. and the flight kit box for the Zoom microphone. I just pick up all three of those and go. I can set this thing up in ten minutes and be interviewing somebody. And it’s basically everything that I need. One thing that’s missing right now is microphone stands. I’m currently hand-holding this microphone. That is obviously suboptimal. I’m going to be buying a pair of microphone stands. I’m going to include that in the equipment list. But yeah, I mean, other than that You take the zoom like you turn on phantom power for these things because they need to be powered microphones. They’re like actual fancy, like You could have this in a 4,000-person arena type microphone with a very narrow pickup. So you also need to make sure that you and anybody else that’s recording with you are practicing their microphone technique. You have to speak directly into this microphone. Here is how I sound speaking directly to the side of this microphone. It is probably severely diminished, right? The plus side of this is so that my dog can be snarfing his own butthole right behind me on this microphone, and you would never know. Other noises like a hotel AC system or people walking down the hallway with the ice bucket or whatever have you, like they get diminished significantly with narrow pickup microphones. So it ends up being you you have to come to it with a certain knowledge of how microphone technique works, but the trade-off is that you get much higher quality sound that requires lot less Editing. I have a 64-gig SD card in here. I think I just got the wirecutter SD pic. I have a Lightning to SD card reader that will come in much more handy when I have iOS 11. Files, and I’ll be able to dump it onto Dropbox into a shared folder where I can give it to my editors. And then I have an Anchor SD card reader and a USB-C dongle because I have a new MacBook, and so everything has a dongle on it. And I think that’s it for equipment. I’m hoping to use this. The reason that I’m talking about this is, and I think this is where Kai can come in. I can take this with me when I need to record with Kai and we’re both traveling, so we could have easily done Make Money Online episodes when we were in Hong Kong together. We didn’t. I could easily take this to conferences with me and interview the other speakers and interview the conference organizers in a relatively quiet space. And I have automatically this really professional setup. I can take it to, I mean, I can even do podcasting literally from the fucking beach if I wanted, or I can take it like and do it in a library or in a quieter area or shared office. Or something like that, if I have a good idea. And I mean, I can throw all of this in my backpack, and it’s maybe a pack weight of like seven or eight pounds. So it’s entirely It’s not that much more than what you would be doing.
One of the audience building and one of the client attraction systems that I often talk about, or my students or clients use, is launching a podcast to interview either leaders in their industry, build up content, or interview leaders in their industry who are potential clients to establish that relationship because Reaching out to somebody and saying, Hey, can I interview you? often gets you past the gatekeepers. And I’ve often advocated that if you live in a larger city, you gain more value from it being a face-to-face meeting than a Skype call. And so By having a system like this, there definitely is upfront cost, but you’re able to recoup some of the creating content like, oh, you went to MicroConf, or you went to a small e-commerce conference, or you went to a meetup Great, interview the speaker or one of the speakers and create content there. But on top of it, okay, if you could identify 10, 20, 30 potential businesses in your city, or like I live in Eugene, even up in Portland, a drive away. Set up lunch meetings with them and say, Hey, you know what? I’d love to interview you for my show or for my audience or for this project. More than likely, people will say, Yes, now you’re having a conversation with them about their business. You’re building up trust with them. And then it’s easier to say, well, we talked about this problem on the show, but now that we’re off the air, how could I help with that? And segue not into a sales conversation. But into a deeper conversation about the problem they’re experiencing or the outcome they’re searching for.
Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And I want to be abundantly clear here. This is a like level up tactic. Like the thing that I’m talking about, this is not something that you should be doing if you’re just starting out. I would say it’s like a 200-level tactic. And for me, like this whole rig came in under $1,000, but not by much.
Right. And this is very much. Three years into you actively podcasting, both online, guesting. This is very much a 200-300-level level.
I spent months wrangling about like What I should be buying, whether I should be really going for the luxury solution. You can downgrade these by getting a Rode Podcaster mic and a Zoom H4 and probably shave $500 off of what I bought.
How much loss in quality would you have? I mean, does that drop you down to two mic ports instead of four?
You get a lot of room noise. Okay. You get a lot of room noise. And it drops you down to two mic ports. And then there’s a third that you can add on to the top of the microphone, to the top of the recorder. That adds two more microphone ports, I think. I totally forget whether or not that’s the case. The Zoom H5 and the Zoom H4 both have two XLR mic ports, so you wouldn’t be able to do like a group conversation. And I bought this entirely as a what if I need to do that. And so if I have like a you know a pair of founders or something like that, all of a sudden I need three microphones. Great. Now I’m priming another microphone. which is expensive. These are expensive mics, but they’re extremely good at what it is they do.
I think that I I mean just from like let’s pick on Microconference because it’s a conference we both go to, or not you. It’s a conference I’ve gone to, it’s a conference that’s prevalent in the industry for bootstrappers and software founders. You might want to speak with the speakers, but speakers are busy. Speakers are doing a lot of things.
Well, you talk with the other attendees because they’re probably good enough to be speakers.
Well, I was going to go in a different direction of, well, if you’re only able to get Three of the speakers in one room for 20 minutes, and it happens to be the same 20 minutes. Okay, great, with a setup like this, do a roundtable panel. Hey, we’re having a conversation with these three speakers, da-da-da, about this topic. And so it’s easier to generate an episode that way. But I completely agree. Another tactic is when you have equipment like this, interview people in the audience. Interview people who applied for a talk or are thinking about applying for a talk or have spoken elsewhere but aren’t speaking at this conference. They will have wonderful insights to share and provide excellent content. And it’ll be unique content because where else are they presenting it? Just to you.
Yeah, yeah. The super cheap solo route, you pass a mic and you get a lightning preamp for your phone and you run it into voice memos. You get the best audio. Quality.
That’s so good. I’m serious. No, I completely agree. And I think that’s a great, great strategy. When we go a little meta on podcasting, I agree with my friend Aaron Mankey about. The sort of breakdown between what’s the importance of audio quality versus technology versus content, and a lot of people Focus very, very much on tools. And it’s ironic to be saying this since this is very much a tools-focused episode and a how to have great quality content episode or audio quality. I think even if you’re just doing like pass the mic back and forth, or hey, we brought the blue Yeti and there’s going to be a bunch of room noise. Don’t use a blue Yeti. Don’t use a Blue Yeti, but there’s going to be a lot of Great content there. And even if the audio quality is C or C, but the content is interesting and engaging, people will forgive the audio quality.
I don’t fully agree with that, to be honest. But you’re an audiophile. No, I’m not. I’m not. I have crap this audio system behind me is thirteen years old. Fair. I own a thousand records and put them on terrible Equipment. I run everything. This whole rig is maybe a grand hops. It looks impressive because there’s a lot of it, but I don’t. But I do. I think that when you are, it is very different when you are recording. It is a garbage in, garbage out thing because I put excellent recordings on this stereo system and they manage to sound great across a variety of stereo systems. You know, you are listening to a great recording when you have an eye. iPhone speaker and it’s tinny horror and it still sounds good. And I think that if you the goal is to get the best bang for your buck and you do that by getting good microphone and a good preamp and then you let Chris Deal with the rest of it. Right? Like, so I actually don’t know if I fully agree with that. And I think people notice crappy audio quality. A good podcast lives or dies on good audio quality. It is what held me back. From podcasting for years because we got an editor to actually account for my stupidity. So I don’t know, man. I don’t know if I fully agree with it. Now, I think that after you get past a certain point, nobody cares. Right. But I don’t think C is it, man. I don’t think a I don’t think a Blue Yeti is it. I don’t even think a Rode Podcaster if you have room noise is it. And so the reason I have these fancy ass microphones is so I can operate I mean, there’s an air conditioner going in the background right now. And if you have any of your headphones that are noise-canceling or really, really good studio monitors or something like that, you probably noticed that it kicked in. But for the 95% of the rest of you, you don’t have to care about that. Right. Right. Right. So, I think that matters.
Yeah. Yeah. But, but for listeners in the audience, in terms of like next steps, if you’re interested in podcasting, there’s a huge, huge range of different tools and different tactics and techniques. Definitely start, I think, lower on the budget side and then iterate over time. Nick and I have both upgraded our rigs multiple times over the years. That’s right. As we’ve gotten better and as we sort of said, oh, let’s try it for the next level. Oh, we’re seeing returns here. You could definitely start out with something that’s affordable and cost you under two C notes, under a C note, even maybe.
I think $200 is a good starting. This was about $1,000. But there’s a lot of ancillary things that you’re going to be buying. Even just the cables and AC adapters for this were like $150. And you have to buy cables. Like, the thing has to connect to the other thing. That’s not an option. Now you can maybe get cheap cables from like FreeGeek or Drift Store or something like that. Would you trust that? I don’t know. I would I prefer buying like, you know, first party cables and first party AC adapters so I know everything is likely to work. Because if you get a like su if you get, say, Seth Godin, very frequent listener to our podcast. If Seth hello, Seth, it’s been a while. We should get some, I don’t know, whatever you eat. Together sometime things. If Seth Godin wants to sit down with you, you don’t want to fuck up that interview. Right? So, like. Have reliable equipment. Have things that work. Know how to operate your Zoom recorder. You realize we recorded. Four podcast episodes before this one on a preamp that probably wasn’t all that germane for it because I didn’t know how to turn on phantom power on my Zoom recorder. I fixed it. Good news. Right? But, like, that’s a thing you’ve got to account for, and you have to be cognizant of that.
So, I have a follow-up question to your gear list. Your Klein Tool bag is it the 10 inch long by 8 inch high by 3. 5 inch wide?
It’s part 5139. If you just Google Klein Tools 5139 You’ll get it. I think it’s the 10-inch canvas bag. I mean, it looks like this. Do you have a photo in front of you?
Yeah, but it didn’t look the same time. But now I found the 5139. Okay, great. You solved it.
Yeah. Um yeah, so uh we’re gonna write up all this equipment stuff in the show notes. This is gonna be kind of a short quick hit episode. It’s a stupid tools episode. Um but it should give you you know a sense of what what I bought and why I bought it and um I think I’m excited to be using this rig for at least the next five to ten years. I have no interest in upgrading any of it. The only kind of upgrading that might occur is I buy more microphones of the same varietal of microphone.
Well, this you actually just said something that brought a funny quote to mind. Are you a fan of the Discworld series?
I actually have never read the Discworld series, and I know that as you’re probably.
Anyway, so there’s the Samuel Vimes theory of socioeconomics or of economics, and it relates to boots. If you are on the poorest side of things, you buy a pair of boots, it works for a year, and then you need to buy a new pair of boots because they’re worn themselves out. If you’re on the richer side, well, you buy a pair of boots and it lasts you for 20 years. And the equipment might cost, the boots might cost twice as much, but they last dramatically longer. I think you also see that as you start upgrading tools. The tools you start with. Again, as I said, start with the cheaper end of things so you could experiment and see what works. But then, as you upgrade, well, upgrade with intentionality. Nick invested a lot in building this rig, but is planning to get. 10 years out of it. That’s $100 a year. That’s $8 a month.
You can say that for the house we’re sitting in and the table we’re sitting at, and the chairs we’re sitting on. I mean, like, that’s my ethics right there. Buy the best thing and let it last.
Longer than you. I just spent more than an IMAX worth of money on a bed frame, and I spent the last nine months debating which bed frame to buy, and I finally ordered it. And I realized, well, this is like a 15-year purchase. This is a handcrafted wood bed frame that I’m very excited to get. And even though it was a dumb amount of money, and I’m like, how the fuck did I spend that much money on this thing? It’s something I’m going to sleep on basically every single night of my life. It’s something I’m very excited to own. I love the design of it. It’s like the platonic ideal of a bedframe. And it’s a fifteen plus year purchase. So yes, it’s an upfront cost, but it’s also thinking about it in terms of, well, how much am I really spending each year, each month for this? $10 to sleep in $10 a month to sleep in my dead Good night, dream the damage. The same for your podcasting rig.
The same for, I mean, Aaron actually asked me what to do with my watch after I die. Yeah. Your partner should be concernedly asking about most objects in the house. What do we do with your pen after you die? What do we do with your podcasting rig after you die? Also, dips.