Originally Posted by jjblair  I was doing a session some famous singer who's been carrying the same U87 around in a shoe box for the last 30 years, and insists on using it. We put it up, and immediately, it sounded like a U87. Too much 1kHz, a little boxy, sibilant, etc. I talked him into letting me put a M49 on him, because I thought it would work much better with his voice. The producer and everybody in the room couldn't get over how much better it sounded, but the singer couldn't deal. He was so used to the way his vocal sounded through a U87, and we wound up doing the record on the U87.
That is one of the only times that a U87 was chosen over other mics, and the only person who preferred that sound was the singer. The U87 is almost never chosen over other choices, but it works well on everything, and it's neutral enough that you can EQ it plenty to get a sound that fits the track.
Why was a U87 used on whatever record? Generally, because that was the mic that was available at the time. Either the studio didn't have a U47 or 251, or they were not working properly, or they were being used on some other instrument. People didn't have endless amounts of time to audition crap in their bedroom studios, and weren't able to listen to shootouts on Gearslutz. They were paying $200/hr just for the room. Grab something you know works, and start tracking. In many instances, that's a U87. It's not the best, far from the worst, and always workable.
I've owned three of them, from 1968 to late '70s. I decided that they were redundant in my mic locker, because I didn't prefer them on any source to any of my other mics, so I sold them for a profit. But if I had to make a record and that was all there was, I could make a good sounding record with ten of them. |