Tablet/phone clamps, cup holders and other accessories for your mic stand

A microphone stand is a simple thing: a tube on a base, with a clip at the top. But hang a tablet holder, extra arm or cup holder on it and it becomes a multifunctional piece of kit.

Lyric sheets or tablet

For years I worked with sheets of A4, taped to the stand or on the floor with a beer mat as a paperweight. All it took was one door opening and the second half of the verse ended up in the audience. A tablet or phone on your stand solves that problem: lyrics and chords on one screen. That said, there are also sheet music holders that clamp onto your stand.

A tablet/smartphone holder clamps around the tube or screws onto the thread at the top of the stand. Most tablet holders rotate from portrait to landscape and tilt, so you can angle the screen towards you and still read it under stage lighting. A phone holder is the same thing, just smaller, and perfect for just a setlist or a single set of lyrics. It’s a relief not to have to flick through pages between songs or spend half an hour beforehand putting everything in order.

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It’s all about the clamp

Cheap, unbranded holders often have flimsy plastic arms and an adjustment mechanism that needs three hands to operate. At home, where the stand and holder probably always stay in one place and hardly ever need adjusting, that’s not much of a problem. But on stage, I’d recommend going for something a cut above.

The key difference lies in how firmly the clamp stays on the stand when the stand vibrates. Rubber on the gripping surfaces helps, as does a locking mechanism you can give an extra turn. Think of it like a hook from the DIY shop: it’s not the hook that determines what you can hang on it, but the wall plug.

The same logic applies to the cup holder: that underrated accessory that never fails to make me happy. Tip: mount it low, on the side where you don’t swing your guitar, and check what’s underneath before you pour a drink into it. By the way, there are plenty more add-ons for your mic stand that you never knew you needed.

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Extra arms and attachments

Got a straight stand without an arm? Then you can extend it with a separate boom arm, effectively turning it into a boom stand. That means you can position the microphone where the base or vertical tube won’t fit: above a snare drum, in front of a guitar amp on the floor, or at an angle in front of a singer who also plays guitar and doesn’t want the tube knocking against their knees.

Where arms tend to go wrong is sagging. A cheap arm with a weak clamp holds a light microphone just fine, until a heavier one goes on and the mic droops towards the floor halfway through the set. Regular adjusting will also leave it worn and floppy over time. The ideal choice is a clamp with teeth that properly locks the angle in place, and even better, with heavy condenser or ribbon microphones, a counterweight at the other end of the boom.

For the precision work, there’s the gooseneck: a flexible tube with a steel coil inside, which you can bend in any direction and which stays exactly where you put it. All these parts fit together like building blocks, and for me that’s where the fun lies. A bag to keep them all together is certainly no unnecessary luxury.

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Will it fit? Threads, bases and cables

This is where things go wrong most often. Stands and accessories come with two common thread sizes: 5/8″ is the American standard and 3/8″ the European one. If the thread on the holder and the stand doesn’t match, you’ll need a thread adapter, which unfortunately isn’t always included. Luckily they don’t cost much, but you do need to remember to get one.

My advice: look at the actual thread on both the holder and the stand, not at the country where you buy them. A European stand may well have a 5/8″ thread, and vice versa. So check the specifications. (A clamp that grips around the tube doesn’t have these thread issues, of course, but then you’ll need to keep an eye on the tube diameter instead.)

Oh, and when it comes to securing cables to your stand: hook-and-loop straps around the tube slide along neatly when you adjust the height, whereas rigid clips don’t. I gave up on those years ago.

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» Try the Interactive Microphone Stand Selector
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