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Location: UK | Need a bit of help, im not a Pro so dont expect professional quality and repro of sound, just summat good enough to mess around with a 4 track.
What Mic`s are deemed a damn good budget Mic to use on Ovations?
I use a vocal Mic atm, and it has to be real close, and picks up all sorts of sounds, in fact i can almost hear on playback the squeak of my arse cheeks as i fidget on my chair :eek: |
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Location: Scotland | Gary, two great value, great sounding mikes for your purposes would be the Rode NT3 or the AKG C1000S. They are both high-quality small diaphragm condenser mikes (actually the AKG is a back-eletret, the Rode is a true condenser, but I'm splitting hairs) which importantly, can operate on either phantom power or an internal 9V. They cost around £120 or less in the UK. Go mad, buy two, & discover the joys of coincident-pair stereo recording, you'll never record in mono again once you've heard the difference.
Paul
[ May 13, 2002: Message edited by: Paul Templeman ] |
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Location: NJ | without going on and on about neumann how about a senneheiser 421? |
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Location: Scotland | Al, Great mike, but for acoustic guitar an OK condenser mike will outperform the best dynamics in terms of sensitivity, output, frequency response & linearity. It's horses for courses. Also the 421 could hardly be considered a "budget" mike.
Paul |
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Location: NJ | well then the marshall or the octava are both good but I have issues with them.
I guess I see all those old videos of brit bands with 421's and figure they must be all over england. |
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Location: Scotland | BBC enginneers tend to be fond of 421's which is why they're common on Brit TV, plus with our TV licence money they can afford them!
It was Octava who were responsible for making the prices of mikes come crashing down not many years ago. An AKG C1000S was over £300 in the UK maybe 8 or 9 years ago & was good value at that. The Octava Mk219 came out at around £200 with quite spectacular performance for the money, & all the big names crapped themselves & dropped their prices. A C1000 is now less than a third of the early 90's price. A Octava 219 can be had now for £80. BUT....they're Russian, so they look like they've fallen off a T34, & their quality control is virtually non-existant. Good ones sound great but they are extremely inconsistant. Most of the other budget large diaphragm mikes have generic Chinese-made condenser elements. They have the consistency thing nailed, but they sound consistently mediocre to me. But for the home-recordist on a budget they're a godsend. The reason why Neumann & the like are so expensive, apart from German wages, is their quality control is so stringent. When you buy one you're actually paying for another half-dozen capsules & pre's that haven't made the grade. I'll have that matched pair soon!!!!!!!!!!
Paul
[ May 13, 2002: Message edited by: Paul Templeman ] |
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Location: NJ | Paul
agreed Octava's are very inconsistent a pal sat at sam ash and made them open 20 mics before he bought 3 thatwere close.
as for the marshalls well you get what you pay for |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | Far a relatively inexpensive condensor... my favorite is the Rode NT2. Granted the oringial ones from a few years ago priced near $500, but now they are down to around $399.00 maybe a little cheaper on eBay. They are clean, consistant and rugged. If I were to want to replace it, I would make the jump to a U87ai, and not bother with the others.
As far as tube mic's go, there is a company making quite a buzz these days. They are a China manufacter that a lot of critics were dismissing until they actually started testing. They are the same company that allegedly makes the Marshall and other inexpensive tube mic's but they decided to make some nice ones and market them themselves. They are called Studio Projects . I don't have one yet, but after reading and talking to several folks whom opnion I trust.. I will be getting a T-3 which is a dead on copy of the original AKG C12 for female (popular for female vocals). It comes in around the $700 range. The new C12's just don't cut it anymore, and a vintage one in good condition... well... is an old mic and EXPENSIVE.
Of course, if you have nothing better to do with $3,500 I hear a new Soundelux E-47 is a real nice mic. |
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Location: Scotland | The entire Rode range is good, the NT1 is a little basic but it beats anything else at the price in the UK. The new Rode NT4 stereo coincident mike looks very interesting. Strange how a thread about budget gear gets to talking about 3 grand mikes real quick!!!!!!!!
[ May 14, 2002: Message edited by: Paul Templeman ] |
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Location: PA | Well I actually just bought a pair of those Shure KSM 27's. Very nice. They're definately not the most acurate mic's in the whole world, but the color that it does add is pretty sweet. As a stereo pair they sound great, using just one on Vocals sounded pretty smooth too.
A friend just bought a Studio Projects C1. Sounded pretty decent for a cheapy. I think he paid around $120 US. |
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Location: UK | Tnx guys, a few pointers i can chase, but stereo?with twin mic`s, mmm sounds interesting :cool:
I suppose at different position /distance you can alter the sound greatly and mess around with it. |
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Location: Scotland | Gary, stereo miking techniques are great for acoustic guitar. There's basically 3 variations, the coincident pair, the near-coincident pair & the spaced pair (there's also mid/side & the Blumlein array but they involve very expensive bi-directional mikes) Ideally you need matched mikes, ideally the same make, but they must have the same polar response pattern. There's quite a bit of info on this on the web, here's one I found at random
http://www.humbuckermusic.com/acguitrectec.html
The Sound On Sound website has a ton of stuff on miking techniques.
You can also experiment with 2 different mikes, for example a large diaphragm condenser near the bridge & a small diaphragm pointed at around the 14th fret. techniques like this can sound fantastic but are not true stereo.
Paul
[ May 15, 2002: Message edited by: Paul Templeman ] |
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Location: NJ | Paul;
Thanks for that link!
Quite informative.
Will have to try some of those techniques when I record my acoustic SlotHead (w/my cheesy little Tascam 414). |
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Location: NJ | cliff Sgt Pepper was recorded on a four track. |
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Location: NJ | Yeah, I know.
I was just poking a little self-effacing fun at myself amidst all this banter of Rodes, AKGs, Sennheisers, and other precision toys that singularly probably cost more than my entire recording setup (my Tascam and a pair of Audio-Technica vocal mics that I use for live gigs).
I really just use it as a musical "notebook" and to run off the odd demo tape for a club owner. |
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Location: Scotland | At the risk of being accused of pedantry, Sgt Pepper was actually recorded on two 4-track 1inch (Scully, I think) tape machines running at 30ips. They actually had 7 available tracks, as one track was used to sync the 2 machines together. An Abbey Road engineer jury-rigged the sync & it was far from reliable. The sound is so good because of the talent of the musicians & producer, the fact that those old studios had great sounding rooms, They also had lots of classic tube condensers & ribbon mikes and tube compressors & mike pre's which distorted in a very flattering & musical way, plus 4 tracks on 1inch tape running at 30inches a second just sounds amazing. Most modern 4 track machines are technically far more sophisticated than the recording gear available in the late 60's, which just goes to prove what an incredible piece of production albums like Sgt Pepper, Rubber Soul, Pet Sounds etc. actually are. Then go back further & listen to Sun-era Presley or what Les Paul did with 2 disc-cutters..... frightening.
Paul
[ May 16, 2002: Message edited by: Paul Templeman ] |
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Location: NJ | Paul my favorite Jethro Tull album is benefit and I think it was recorded right when all the telefunken tube stuff was being trashed in the UK because it really sounds like it was recorded underwater. |
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Location: Scotland | Al, maybe Jethro Tull recorded "Aqualung" on Telefunken machines. ;)
Paul |
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Location: NJ | I always liked the sound of Aqualung better but think Benefit has far superior song writing. I have no clue where they were recorded except that benefit was before aqualung. It is a shame Benefit sounds so damn bad. |
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Location: NJ | "The Way I Heard It...." (and this came from an interview with Ian Anderson on the "tail end" of the 25th anniversary release of "Aqualung"):
The "Aqualung" album was recorded at a relatively new studio utilizing (then)state-of-the-art equipment. I don't remember the name of the studio as I don't have the CD here at work right now (perhaps one of our UK lads know) but it was an old church that was converted into a recording studio somewhere in (I think) London.
From what I recall of the interview there were in fact two studios in the building. A large, cold studio in the main part of the church designed for big band and orchestral work, and a smaller cozier studio downstairs. Coincidentally, Led Zeppelin was recording at the same studio at the same time (I believe it was Zeppelin III) and evidently got "first dibs" on the smaller studio.
Anderson states that he really wasn't happy with the overall "sound" of the album, partly because they were using new, unfamiliar equipment that they've had no experience with.
Evidently, when it came time for Martin Barre to record the solo in the middle of "Aqualung", Jimmy Page walked in and watched him through the control room window - thereby "unnerving" him a bit. I'd say that ol' Marty's got the "last laugh" though, as today (IMHO) Mr. Barre can mop the stage floor with Pagey on any given day of the week. - but maybe I'm just a little bit "biased". |
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Location: NJ | I dug out my VINYL copy of Benefit and played "cry me a song" and "for Michael Collins, Jeffrey and me" they are stellar songs but my memory was not bad they sound like they were recorded underwater.
I agree with you Cliff on the Page comment. I have a bootleg zep album that is painful to listen to. My pet name for the zep movie: "the songs all sound the same" |
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Location: Scotland | Hey guys..... "It really sounds like it was recorded underwater" - "Aqualung" - I wasn't being serious!!! As a friend of mine often says, "That was a great joke, apart from the bit that was supposed to be funny"
Paul |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | Interesting about "The songs that sound the same" I have a foreign bootleg that I bought in the Philippines. It was however re-mastered (someone must have stolen the tapes).. It is pretty obvious it's the same tracks, however, for example.. the applause on my copy does not cover up the singing and lead on Stairway. I also have a Nazareth hits album re-mastered by the same folks and it's awesome compared to the original.
As far as Page goes.. he didn't have it onstage as much as he should have... but he was amazing in the studio. As opposed to say someone like Joe Perry who had to learn to play the leads to play them on tour, that the early studio guys dreamed up and played on the early Albums (up to Rocks I think). |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | For my three cents I always felt Page was way overrated as a guitarist. That said, you can't take away from what he contributed to music in general. |
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Best Mic?
