My Microphone Beauty Pageant

[Tamra]

Guys, sorry about the cheeky journalistic tone of this, I do a MySpace blog frequented by young bands and female musicians, I wrote this for that. But it includes all the information I promised about my tests so far.
Tamra

Audio Nirvana for Music Nerds: My Microphone Beauty Pageant

Michael Joly told me the Oktava 219 microphone he modded for me had mojo, but when we plugged that sucker in, and I mean the very same instant, the the whole neighborhood blacked out for five hours! Now that's mojo! With slight trepidation we plugged in the 219 yesterday and no black out. I have to admit I was rooting for the 219 when we tried it out, the black out seemed like such a rock and roll omen!

Some of you know about my efforts to find the right vocal chain for myself. I'm not trying to create a working recording studio or become a professional engineer, I just think it's part of what I need to know as a singer. I think it's weird bands care about their guitars, amps, vocal mics, but they surrender it all when they walk into a studio. Led Zep, The Stones? Guys like Mick and Keith, and Jimmy and John Paul were practically engineers, they were engineers in the creation of their own music.

Over the next couple weeks I'll be trying out a variety of vocal chain combinations. Yesterday was our first beauty contest (these are usually called shootouts but these mics are beautiful!).

Contestents:
1. Area51TT through a Payne modded Altec 1556A through LN1176 through a Pultec EQP1A3
This was the vocal chain recommended by analog audio guru Bob Payne of VintageLoop.com when he listened to our songs. The Area51TT is a beautiful mic with a huge capsule, just holding it in your hands you enjoy its aura of high quality. The Altec 1556A is a wonderfully trashy looking preamp with a deep green hammered metal face somehow reminiscent of 70's Schwinn bicycle greens I've seen. If you don't know what an LN1176 or a Pultec are check out my Fun with Pultecs blog and google UA 1176 for a history lesson in rock music recording.

2. OktavaMod 319 through M610 through LN1176 through Pultec
Both OkatavMods were tweaked for me by Michael Joly after listening to our songs. The 319 is a beautiful black metal mic, with its golden circle inside the screen it looks like it belonged to a pharoah in Ancient Egypt. Michael explained to me that the Oktavas are made in a region of Russia renowned for two things: eight hundred years of master metal working and tea cookies. Ah, civilization! Hammer those swords into microphones, camrade. He also speculated that my rather midrangey and gutteral style is not unlike the Russian dialect which the Oktavas were created by and for. You can call it great salesmanship, I call it audio poetry.

3. OktavaMod 219 through M610, LN1176, Pultec
Looks a bit like the AKG C12 or a 414. Michael tweeked both mics to have a lot of air on top for me but this one he said had the characteristics of my favorite live mic, the SM57, but on steroids. Been looking forward to trying it out ever since! He hand picks each mic then replaces key components with high quality parts guided by his expert ear and years of experience testing all the variations of the individual parts that make up mics. It's a fantastic deal, almost half as much as the Area51TT which is itself a bargain for such high quality.

4. vintage early 60s Sennheiser/Telefunken 421 through M610, LN1176 and Pultec
What the hell!

Results:
Vocal chains 1 and 3 tied for best.

1 was great for aggressive rock vocals: detailed, it cut through the mix, warm as you could want, with a little growl for edge. If I had to have only one vocal chain I could happily survive with this one. The 1556A is also great for bass.

3 was great for quieter tracks, it had a ring and a sheen to it that was really pleasing and found sonorous qualities in my voice where other mics found harshness. I could be happy with it on aggressive tracks too, it's just a little less growly than 1. We're thinking the M610 may be too clean for this mic, can't wait to hear it with the Chandler Germ and Tab V87 preamps.

2 was our favorite outside the mix soloed, but it was too mid-range for our two guitar drums sound and my vocals didn't cut through. Another candidate for the Germ!

4 was blown out of the water and went back to duty on the drum toms where it excels.

Compressors we try next:
DBX 160VUs (today)
Meek SC2 1.05 (we get it tomorrow but we still need to buy a step down transformer)
STA-level (any day now demo from VintageKing, can't wait to try out this recreation of a classic!)

Preamps we'll try next:
Chandler Germanium (any day now, another demo from VK)
Tab-Funkenwerk V87 (see above)

Mics:
Nitebob's favorite Neumann (early next week)
KorbyKat FET (any day now, VK demo)

Though it's still early in the actual pageant for which vocal chain(s) I wed, we can recommend without hesitation Michael Jolly's OctavaMod mics (Oktavamod.com) and VintageLoop.com's Robert Payne's Altec mod and advice about gear and recording. If we could have only afforded what they provided we would have been able to accomplish our goal of getting great vocal recordings for my difficult voice.