5 Inexpensive Ways To Hide Your Lavalier Microphone Under Clothes

You can clip on your lavalier microphone, but that way it will show up in your image. And sometimes you just want them out of way, so they don’t show up on the screen.

Maybe you don’t like how the lav looks in an interview, maybe you want to hide it on your talent in your horror short, or maybe your actress is only wearing a bra and panties, and you want to be able to hide it away.

So in this blog post, I wanted to give some tips on how you can conceal your lavalier mics under your clothes.

Let’s dive in.

1. Use Stickies and Undercovers from Rycote

But what should you do, if you want to hide the lav mic beneath the clothes?

Well there are a few ways to go about this. Some are pretty expensive, and one is pretty frugal.

The safest way to go about it is to buy something like the hypoallergenic undercovers pads from Rycote.

Not only are they hypoallergenic, which means that you can stick them directly onto the skin of your talent or interviewee without the risk of an allergic reaction to the adhesive material.

You can, of course, also stick them to the clothes.

The Rycote Undercover Pads consists of two things:

1. Stickies, which are double-sided hypoallergenic adhesive pads, that you can stick to skin or clothes.
2. Undercover Sleeves, that you put over the head of the lavalier microphone, so you don’t get any scraping noises from clothes.

These are a great option for mounting lavalier microphones under your clothes. But it can get pretty expensive in the long run, if you have to use some of these every day because the stickers included are only meant for one use.

2. Rycote Stickies

If you don’t need the Undercovers sleeves, you can simply get some Rycote Stickies.

They are available in several shapes and sizes – some are shaped like a hollow circle, some are round, and some are square.

You can also get some that are meant for specific microphones like this roll with 500 pieces made for Sony lav microphones.

Now, I haven’t tested this, but I can’t see, why you shouldn’t be able to use the latter with other small light-weight lavs like the ones from Sennheiser as well? Especially if your lav has the small cylinder head shape?

3. Use Sennheiser Lav Tape

Another way to go about it is to use lav tape from Sennheiser. The lavalier tape from Sennheiser is also hypoallergenic.

The Sennheiser Lav Tape is a more budget-friendly option than the pads from Rycote because you get approximately 32.8 feet (10 meters) of tape in each roll, which will last you a long time.

Again, you don’t get the Undercovers sleeves to protect against scraping sounds from clothing, but if you know how and where to mount the lav, you should be able to get around this.

Speaking of which, let’s have a look at how you can use adhesive moleskin to conceal you lav microphone.

4. Use URSA Adhesive Moleskin

Ursa Adhesive Moleskin is another great option for taping your lavalier microphone directly to the skin of your actor.

And with a little trick, you can get about the same effect, as you can with the Undercover sleeves from Rycote.

The trick is to simply use two strips of tape to make a “sandwich” for you lavalier microphone.

The first piece of tape goes directly onto the skin of your talent, and the second goes over you microphone and attaches it to the first piece of tape.

I’ve found this video by Saramonic International, that explains it well:

The Ursa Adhesive Moleskin is designed for this and is, of course, hypoallergenic as well.

5. Use Gaff Tape to make an Encapsulating Triangle and tape the lav mic to the clothes (but not the skin!)

The last option is to use a piece of high-quality gaffer tape to create a small encapsulated space for your lavalier microphone.

In fact, you can watch how to do this in the video above as well.

Now, you should never use gaffers tape directly on the skin, but you can still use it to attach your lav mic to the clothes or in the near vicinity of your talent.

Conclusion

These are some inexpensive ways to conceal your lav mics beneath the clothing and prevent scraping noises.

If you know of any other good solutions, please feel free to share in the comment section below.

---