Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimr  Hello DrBill.
I recently purchased an Apex 205 after reading the online article about the
Apex/Coles 4038 shootout.
I am a jazz trumpet player living in the New York City area and I do a
lot of recording in a variety of settings. Usually I try to get the
warmest, fattest sound I can, and for me the Coles has always been my
favorite by far, it's just that the price is a little prohibitive.
I am now getting into some home recording, so I have two questions for
you:
1. As a trumpet player, is the mod to the 205 necessary and/ or
desirable?
2. (Completely unrelated) Recently I did a session with a Coles and at
the end of the date, I was playing flugelhorn on a ballad and all of a
sudden there was an octave below what I played in the head phones and
ON THE TAPE! Some engineer friends tell me it could have been a
problem with the ribbon, and that the track is basically a write-off .
Have you heard of anything like this, and do you think there might be
a way to salvage the track?
Many thanks for your time,
Jim |
haha, sounds to me like the engineer hit something while tracking and isn't admitting fault (or simply doesn't know that it occurred).
There are plenty of pitch altering fx out there and also if recording in digital then there are often simple push button switches for sampling rate and so forth that the engineer might have bumped briefly.
So I'd venture to guess that the issue is a human error of some kind and nothing to worry about in the mic (just yet).
You DO use a nylon or metal wind/pop filter between your horn and the coles, right? :-)
oh, and the track is unsave-able (other than keeping that section in there as an effect). even with really careful and amazingly step-by-step filtering you will change the tone too much if you try to remove the lower octave from that section since it's almost definitely containing upper harmonics that are intertwined with the original tone, making separation impossible.
However if it instead replaced the original (rather than mixed with it in the same take) and is a perfect one octave down replacement in real time then it might be salvageable, but considering it's a ballad and probably an exposed part the tonal change to bring it's sound back up an octave will likely be quite audible when done to just that one section that requires it.
Sorry for the bad news. Give me $5000 and I'll try it though ;-) (just kidding, I wouldn't even try it for free unless I had something to lose by not trying it personally).
Cheers,
Don