Bags for audio location recording are made a plenty, for all sorts of sizes of mixer/recorders and ancillary gear. But they have one thing in common: they are all geared for production sound or similar use. I’ve had several over the years, and just have one nowadays for a Sound Devices 788T paired with an CL-8. It’s fine for when I am recording or mixing sound for film/video, but I’ve never got on with such bags for field-recording. For that I’ve found the needs are quite different as, if not hiking and requiring a backpack (and for that I use a Vango Trail 35 or a North Face Borealis), I want a shoulder bag that has several attributes missing from a sound bag: it needs to be discreet, and must have capacity for additional things such as pens, notebooks, cables, a camera, mics and a windshield. Even a bottle of water. More to the point it must be able to carry those things – especially little items – securely: sound bags are so permeable that even if you can fit additional items in them, there is a high risk of them slipping out, which ain’t too good if you are knee-high in nettles, squatting in the salt marsh, or strolling down the Kilburn High Road. Equally, a production sound bag has things I simply don’t need in the field: I don’t need a raft of pockets for wireless receivers; I don’t need a clear plastic lid to allow me to ride the faders for a live mix while standing in the rain; and I don’t need to be able to connect a harness. I’ve seen many persisting with audio bags in the field and have no idea why so many do: being charitable, perhaps they find them perfect in a way that I simply don’t; or, being less charitable, perhaps they think a sound bag must be the right tool even if there’s no boom pole or actor in sight, and just suffer the inconvenience? I suspect a mix of the two. And, of course, while a production sound bag might be the right tool for one day’s field recording, it might be the wrong too for the next day’s session, even in the hands of the same recordist.

Anyway, I can only speak for myself (evidently!) and I’ve long used other bags for most field recording projects. The ones I have used – initially bought for cameras – for many years have been the rather lovely thick canvas Think Tank Retrospective bags. Of these, my favourite for field recording is my smallest one: the Retrospective 7. It’s smaller than my production sound bag, yet is so more space efficient. In short it’s my perfect small rig field-recording bag apart from one slight niggle: it’s a little fiddly routing mic cables from the sides of the mixer/recorder since, of course, the bag lacks the side exits for cables that I have just lambasted in production sound bags. OK I could have low-profile XLR jumpers, but that rather goes against the streamlined minimalism in the field. At the back of my mind for years has been the thought that one day I would find some massive eyelets to make a few neat holes that would help with cables, but which wouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater and lose the fact that the bag could hold things safely like…well, like a bag should!

This weekend, I finally got around to it. A little bit of research had showed that what I needed to comfortably fit an XLR plug and, say, another cable through a hole would be 25mm (internal diameter) curtain eyelets. I ended up on the website of specialists Hanolex, in Rochdale, and goodness gracious they were fantastic on the phone when I asked the gormless question: what is the difference between a curtain eyelet and other eyelets (the answer: nothing really, just size and the availability of different finishes). Within a couple of days I had the tools and eyelets (their antique nickel ones were a great match) in hand and set-to, destroying my lovely bag…

Now, it is entirely reasonable to wonder why on earth would anyone write a blog post about making four holes in what was a perfectly nice bag beforehand? On one level it is as silly as posting a photo of a meal you are meant to be eating or, worse for others, a live gig you are meant to be enjoying (yes, I can be a stereotypically grumpy middle-aged bloke), but there may be someone out there who is unthinkingly struggling with a production sound bag, perhaps attracting unwanted attention when not actually recording, and losing items in the long grass. And there may be someone out there who has never come across the Retrospective bags or some other equally useful equivalent, or, if they have, hasn’t got to grips with whatever little niggle that stops it being the perfect field-recording bag for them. If so, this blog post is for you: get hold of an eyelet punch or whatever tool you need, and get butchering your bag. Just don’t blame me when it all goes wrong. And if you find production sound bags perfect for all field recording uses, then that’s fine, of course, though I suspect you won’t have reached the end of this post!