Grandfather wants to record himself telling stories... How?

[cbdb]

The one thing I wonder is how he will read while the mic is in front of him.

The reading material on a music stand (put a piece of carpet under the paper to reduce reflections and vibrations off the stand) with the mic hanging down above it (the capsule on the botttom) and angled back a bit. This is the usual practice. The guy in the pic is singing, he should be closer for narration. You might want some headphones for him also.

[boggy]

Destroyer, if you really need a good sounding recording, choice of microphone and mic-preamp isn't straight forward, but you must do some experimentation. Good microphone with good mic-preamp matched to some particular voice are very individual. Price isnt always the measure of quality....
I think that you can buy couple of hours in some nice studio, where you can find many mic-preamps and many microphones, and try to find some that sound good with your grandfather.

hope this helps

boggy

[cbdb]

I disagree, 90% of close miced dialog (narration), in studios that can afford them are done with Neuman U-87s (the one in the picture), and any decent mic pre. As I said earlier the biggest factors are mic placement and the narrators mic technique then the room and then the processing (EQ/compresion). ( I have recorded thousands of hours of dialog in a studio with $100k worth of mics )