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Tube Microphones?

MakeMineVinyl

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What the h--l were you doing there? :D:D:D:D:D:D:DSennheiser MD 421? Why did you like it?
I was a recording engineer there in the 70s. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think at the time that Sound City would go on to legendary status for what happened when I was there. I can confidently say that I wasn't a contributor to that 'legend', at least not that I'm aware of. It was just a really funky studio back then in a faceless Van Nuys industrial park.

The MD421 just gave me a sound which I felt was unique, and I preferred it to all the Neumanns sitting in the microphone closet.
 
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Robin L

Robin L

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I was a recording engineer there in the 70s.

The MD421 just gave me a sound which I felt was unique, and I preferred it to all the Neumanns sitting in the microphone closet.
Very good to know. Sounds fabulous. I consider myself lucky to have two sessions [one as observer, one as assistant engineer] at Skywalker, with Jack Vad as engineer [only] at the first session and as engineer and co-producer in the second. Second session involved the then SOTA [ish] Nagra D. As regards time in a "studio", that was it. I recorded a lot of concerts, a few CDs, a couple of which are actually good.

 
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DonH56

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The MD421 was/is a great drum mic; IIRC that's what Sennheiser designed it for. At least on the bass and toms, though I usually hung some Shure SM81's or little DPA dots or whatever overhead to capture the high end better.
 

Timcognito

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I have a number of Roy DuNann jazz recordings because I like the music but also I like the sound he captured. Way not a recording engineer but I find this topic Interesting. Much info here FYI
 
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Robin L

Robin L

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The MD421 was/is a great drum mic; IIRC that's what Sennheiser designed it for. At least on the bass and toms, though I usually hung some Shure SM81's or little DPA dots or whatever overhead to capture the high end better.
There's a funky little Sennheiser microphone intended for mic-ing a guitar speaker---E 609---I'm using for our percussionist. Is that a good option?
 
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Robin L

Robin L

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I have a number of Roy DuNann jazz recordings because I like the music but also I like the sound he captured. Way not a recording engineering but I find this topic Interesting. Much info here FYI
Fabulous thread, thanks!
 

MakeMineVinyl

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The MD421 was/is a great drum mic; IIRC that's what Sennheiser designed it for. At least on the bass and toms, though I usually hung some Shure SM81's or little DPA dots or whatever overhead to capture the high end better.
The toms is what I usually used it on. On snare I used either a KM84, C451 or SM57 depending on my whims at the moment. I can't specifically remember what I used on kick. Overheads were usually U87s. Sound City had a really good drum booth in studio "B". Studio "A" was just all drum booth. :D
 
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Robin L

Robin L

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The toms is what I usually used it on. On snare I used either a KM84, C451 or SM57 depending on my whims at the moment. I can't specifically remember what I used on kick. Overheads were usually U87s. Sound City had a really good drum booth in studio "B". Studio "A" was just all drum booth. :D
Yeah, I recall my German pressing of "Nevermind". Dave Grohl made a documentary about the studio, naturally.
 

MakeMineVinyl

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Yeah, I recall my German pressing of "Nevermind". Dave Grohl made a documentary about the studio, naturally.
I find it odd that studio "B" isn't mentioned much at all. It was a nice room, a whole lot smaller than studio "A", but had a Neve 8 track console, Ampex MM1200 24 track and Studer 2 tracks. The control room was set up for quad monitoring, although that was never used while I was there. I think quad was pretty dead by that point.
 

HarmonicTHD

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Rode NT1A or 2A. Flat. Low Noise. Cheap. And distortion (eg. tube harmonics), EQ (eg presence) or anything else added by DAW.

He has a ton of mic reviews for further options.

 
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Blumlein 88

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I find it odd that studio "B" isn't mentioned much at all. It was a nice room, a whole lot smaller than studio "A", but had a Neve 8 track console, Ampex MM1200 24 track and Studer 2 tracks. The control room was set up for quad monitoring, although that was never used while I was there. I think quad was pretty dead by that point.
Maybe it was because Dave Grohl was a drummer in Nirvanna.
 
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Robin L

Robin L

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Maybe it was because Dave Grohl was a drummer in Nirvanna.
Well of course---the drum sound on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is awesome, and if I was the drummer that was recorded in that room for that song, I'd sure remember it.
 

KSTR

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The MD421 was/is a great drum mic; IIRC that's what Sennheiser designed it for.
Uhm, it was introduced and clearly qualifies as universal directional dynamic studio grade microphone and can be used for almost any near-field duty on voices and instruments (sans kick drum and cymbals, maybe) and has nice features, hum cancelling for example.
For a long time, it also was the go-to mic for reporters and live broadcast. This mic was very present for many decades in Germany and in my personal life.

There also was a Star-Trek style table stand:
1651787003427.png

 

DonH56

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Uhm, it was introduced and clearly qualifies as universal directional dynamic studio grade microphone and can be used for almost any near-field duty on voices and instruments (sans kick drum and cymbals, maybe) and has nice features, hum cancelling for example.
For a long time, it also was the go-to mic for reporters and live broadcast. This mic was very present for many decades in Germany and in my personal life.

There also was a Star-Trek style table stand:
View attachment 204756
Hmmm... Been too many years so I can't argue with that. I remember using it as an instrument mic, and am pretty sure that's how Sennheiser listed it at the time, but I don't have one now, and did not look it up on the Sennheiser site. The only thing I remember is that, while it did a good job handling high SPL (150 dB+), it rolled off around 30 Hz (as did/do many "instrument" mics). The 600-series had higher LF roll-off (may have changed since then, been a while). I used the 421 and a 902 (? -- side-fire, went down to 20 Hz) on the drums and guitar cabs, but most of my mics were Shure and AKG models so I may be misremembering (senility).

I remember the little stand -- I put it on the floor in front of the kick drum, or under the toms (which provided some "interesting" effects but ultimately I did not care for the "boom").

At this point I don't have any but the strongest of memories from that time, if even those, so am probably wrong. Oh well. My memory is one of the studio recording engineers said to get those two dynamics for drums and bass guitars as they were relatively inexpensive (not to me at the time!) and much more robust for stage work. Except for the drums, and sometimes acoustic guitars, pretty much everything else on stage used venerable (if peaky) Shure 57 or 58 mics. The condensers only generally came out when I was recording a group of vocalists or musicians like a quartet or chamber group, or for a symphony, not a rock or country band. I learned the hard way that condensers react poorly to drops from stage to floor...
 
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Robin L

Robin L

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I learned the hard way that condensers react poorly to drops from stage to floor...
My sort of work was more genteel, as one might expect.

Reminds me of when I was setting up in First Congo, Berkeley [favored site for many SFEMS concerts] for that afternoon's concert during a biannual Berkeley Early Music Festival. Elizabeth Blumenstock hands me her "fiddle", saying something along the lines of "check it out" with a huge grin on her face [exposing her lovely gapped front teeth]. I look inside, it said "Stradivarius" in obviously aged ink. My heart nearly stopped, contemplating what might happen if I dropped it. It was from the UC Berkeley collection, reworked back into original condition at a lower pitch [I think A = 415]. Was the darkest sounding violin I ever heard. If a violin could sound like chocolate, it is this violin.
 

Cbdb2

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The MD421 was/is a great drum mic; IIRC that's what Sennheiser designed it for. At least on the bass and toms, though I usually hung some Shure SM81's or little DPA dots or whatever overhead to capture the high end better.
Horses for courses. Nice to have a large selection of different kinds of mics. I wouldn't use a sm57 on vocals in the studio but they can sure make a distorted electric guitar punch. Same guitar with a clean sound maybe not.
 

MakeMineVinyl

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Uhm, it was introduced and clearly qualifies as universal directional dynamic studio grade microphone and can be used for almost any near-field duty on voices and instruments (sans kick drum and cymbals, maybe) and has nice features, hum cancelling for example.
For a long time, it also was the go-to mic for reporters and live broadcast. This mic was very present for many decades in Germany and in my personal life.

There also was a Star-Trek style table stand:
View attachment 204756
Makes me want to buy one to relive my mis-spent youth. I gotta say, every time I tried to use any other mic, I kept coming back to the MD421. It had that 'something' which I really liked. I was really the only engineer at Sound City who had this strange fetish for the MD421; everybody else went straight for the KM84. Maybe that's why I never became famous like some of the other engineers. :mad:
 
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Robin L

Robin L

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Makes me want to buy one to relive my mis-spent youth. I gotta say, every time I tried to use any other mic, I kept coming back to the MD421. It had that 'something' which I really liked. I was really the only engineer at Sound City who had this strange fetish for the MD421; everybody else went straight for the KM84. Maybe that's why I never became famous like some of the other engineers. :mad:
That's alright, looks like I'm re-entering doing tech work for an elementary school Zoom assembly. I never got famous either, and I love KM 84s.
 

MakeMineVinyl

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I thought I'd share this from the box of an Audio Fidelity pre-recorded tape I recently bought on eBay. It's just such perfect marketing bullshit of the type which was used in the 60s when audiophiles were more gullible than now. (actually I take that back; audiophiles are MORE gullible now, but whatever).

"This stereo recording was made on an Ampex tape recorder - model 300 with specially designed electronic circuits and utilizing two improved 4-channel Sigma mixers with extended range. New positive microphone techniques were used with emphasis on clarity, brilliance and quality of the recording consistent with maximum definition and minimum distortion, realizing the ultimate in signal to noise ratio.

Engineering techniques designed to maintain maximum level and dynamic range with minimum print-through result in a recording of unusual quality and character. Note that this tape recording is an exact duplicate of the original stereo master tape with a dynamic frequency range of 16-25,000 cycles. This readily readable on any oscilloscope.

While it is true that the extreme ends of the sound spectrum in this recording may be beyond the range of average human hearing, it is the opinion of the manufacturer that if these sounds were omitted or deleted a certain warmth of tone as well as an element of personal emotional experience that is felt and sensed rather than heard, would be lost.

It is for this as well as other reasons that we have gone to these extreme electronic lengths to produce this fine tonal frequency range recording".


Indeed o_O
 
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Robin L

Robin L

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I thought I'd share this from the box of an Audio Fidelity pre-recorded tape I recently bought on eBay. It's just such perfect marketing bullshit of the type which was used in the 60s when audiophiles were more gullible than now. (actually I take that back; audiophiles are MORE gullible now, but whatever).

"This stereo recording was made on an Ampex tape recorder - model 300 with specially designed electronic circuits and utilizing two improved 4-channel Sigma mixers with extended range. New positive microphone techniques were used with emphasis on clarity, brilliance and quality of the recording consistent with maximum definition and minimum distortion, realizing the ultimate in signal to noise ratio.

Engineering techniques designed to maintain maximum level and dynamic range with minimum print-through result in a recording of unusual quality and character. Note that this tape recording is an exact duplicate of the original stereo master tape with a dynamic frequency range of 16-25,000 cycles. This readily readable on any oscilloscope.

While it is true that the extreme ends of the sound spectrum in this recording may be beyond the range of average human hearing, it is the opinion of the manufacturer that if these sounds were omitted or deleted a certain warmth of tone as well as an element of personal emotional experience that is felt and sensed rather than heard, would be lost.

It is for this as well as other reasons that we have gone to these extreme electronic lengths to produce this fine tonal frequency range recording".


Indeed o_O
these extreme electronic lengths . . .

Sounds like a potential Craig Ferguson/Geoff Peterson routine.

KPFA had a slew of Ampex 300s at the old studio, a couple were swapped out for Otaris at the new station.
And then came DAT.
 
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