Mojave MA-101 Goes Stellar with Everything Audio!

Rockets to the Stars!
http://mojaveaudio.com/MA-101fet.html

Mojave Mic's MA-101 small-cap condenser gets a stellar review from the Everything Audio Network, who went so far as to give the mic their coveted "Stellar Sound" award. Nicey nice!

A Perfect Home Studio Mic For Instrument Recording
by Dr. Fred Bashour
David Royer, noted microphone designer and creator of the made-in-USA, high-end Royer ribbon microphone line, has created a line of home-studio priced microphones with professional-grade specifications — Mojave Audio. And from the Mojave line, the new MA-101fet is one of the most remarkable instrument microphones I have used in the past forty-five years!
In all those years, my mic cabinet has included numerous high-end, small-diaphragm microphone — and many of the large diaphragm microphones as well. These new Mojave mics, however, defy the “small diaphragm vs. large diaphragm” microphone character paradigms.

Read the rest of this review here.

Drewcifer Begins Video Blog:

Analog Planet Presents Big Guitar Tones in the Studio

Part 1



Part 2

The Large (and Very LOUD) Legacy of Bob Heil

"Woo You Weel....Wike We Woo?" The Squakin' Heil Talk Box

Bob Heil is truly a unique dude, and one of the real living legends in the arena of pro sound. And I use the word arena in the quite literal sense, as it was Heil's pioneering designs and high-powered hardware that so many of the classic supergroups trucked around from arena to arena during rock's glory days. His credits are astonishing when you add them up. From taking cast-off theater equipment to build The Grateful Dead's notorious Wall of Sound, to being the engineering mastermind behind sound systems for The Who (can you say Quadraphenia?), Joe Walsh, ZZ Top, Humble Pie and many others. Heil was literally one of the agents of change that took live sound reinforcement from the dark ages of the 100-watt Shure Vocal Master to the fully modular, crossed-over, bi-amped, triamped, multi-channel mega-ton mega-watt monster of the modern day. And lest we not forget that wierd, wonderful device called the Heil Talk-Box, made famous by Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton and Joe Perry. Oooh-wah-oo-wah, baby! And all the while, Mr. Heil has continued to stay active in his first love, amateur "ham" radio.

The Great Wall of China Cat Sunflower

One thing Heil had not done until recently, was to design and build microphones. over the last decade or so, Heil, along with lifelong friend Joe Walsh, began to revamp the dynamic microphone. For 40 years the industry has been using the same tired old dynamics, so Heil set out to create a newer better transducer for broadcast, stage and studio. The result is the startlingly good line of Heil microphones, quickly becoming embraced by the professional music and sound industry, as well as broadcast, podcast, VO and ham radio. The Heil dynamics' sonic purity, detail and quietness not only beat the usual crowd of dynamics, they rival much more expensive condensers. Analog Planet proudly offers the PR Series, among others. In addition to all being excellent vocal mics, the PR20 and PR40 are our new go-to mics for snare and kick, respectively, and the PR30 may be the best electric guitar dynamic since the Sennheiser MD421. I personally own a couple of these, including a Classic Pro (a PR20 element inside a replica body of the 1950's RCA 74 ribbon) which I use as my personal voice mic. Check out the PR series here.

Heil's Fantastic 40: The PR40 rocks for numerous applications

In four decades in the business, Bob Heil's still as excited about his endeavors as ever. He's easy to get on the phone, and when you do, it's like a pep-talk. His contagious enthusiasm is like that of a 20 year old!

Bob Heil when he WAS 20!

Much has been written about Heil and his accomplishments, as a quick Google search will show. Here are more resources to explore about the iconic Bob Heil:

Heil Mics on Analog Planet
Heil Sound Homepage
Blog 2006
Blog 2007

Bye Bye API -- Hello Pacific-AAAAH!!!

The vaunted A-Designs Pacifica Dual Solid-State Mic Preamp. As Rachel Ray would say, "Yummo!"

I know it's been forever since I blogged. You know how it is -- you get busy, then the stock market tanks, then comes the holiday season, then your toddler starts projectile vomiting, yada yada yada. Sheesh!

Anyhoo, in this first blog of '09 we're singing the praises of the A-Designs Pacifica, the discrete transistor preamp based on the legendary Quad-8 Pacifica console of the 1970s. Over the years, API has been widely heralded by engineers -- myself included -- as being the ultimate "American" sounding mic-pre circuit. Well, maybe not. Read this letter I wrote to A-Designs last week:

For 20 years the API 512 was my go-to mic-pre for pretty much anything and everything in the studio. Lately, I’ve been finding that I go to the A-Designs Pacifica instead. Why? Because it has everything I like about API and then some. It’s midrange character reminds me of the API but the Pacifica is less mid-forward and in general rounder, bigger and more open than the API. It has more high and low frequency response, sort of like a 512 with the “loudness” button on. As a result, the A-Designs is more detailed and airy, while having the fast dynamics that I always liked about the API.

I noticed this when I had a 512 and an A-Designs P-1 Pacifica module side by side in a 500-rack. On a male vocal, using a Mojave MA-200, the P-1 gave a bigger, more present sound. Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy the sound of British iron (Neve,Trident, Daking) as much as the next guy, but ultimately I guess I lean more on the versatility of that clean, fast “American” sound. The Pacifica, with its Quad Eight heritage, may be the ultimate American preamp. Move over API!

A-Designs Homepage

Pacifica on Analog Planet


The Heritage Desk! A real Quad Eight Pacifica console, circa '79, rocking on in Austin.

Microphonium

Analog Planet is not a dealer for Crowley and Tripp Ribbon mics, which is too bad because I like them. They're not taking on any more dealers at the moment. When and if they do, I hope Analog Planet will be on-board. In the meantime, Bob Crowley has a wonderful blog called Microphonium, dedicated to the art and culture of the microphone.

Bob clearly has far more time to blog than I do, no small feat considering how busy he must be. It's admirable that he's such a prolific blogger. He even blogged about the Analog planet logo a few posts ago.

So enjoy Crowley's "Microphonium".

The Wonderful Sony C37A

A while back, I had a Sony C37A mic. It sounded great, especially on my voice. Along around 2000, I sold it for like, $1200. This is one of my biggest gear regrets (of many). In the last few years they have become increasingly rare, sought-after, and pricey. A good one goes for three grand now.



Investigating the mic in recent months, I'm seeing that it really became an industry standard in the early and mid 1960's, especially in LA studios. In my recent interview with legendary LA producer Bones Howe (to be published in Tape Op at some time in the future), he mentions the C37A a couple of times. When micing drums, he used one or two for overheads, and a Telefunken U47 out front of the kick. It was a favorite vocal condenser in studios like United Western, Radio Recorders, Wally Heider, and others. Apparently even Frank Sinatra preferred it to the U47.

I'm convinced the reason the C37A is now so scarce and desirable is Daniel Lanois' religious dedication to the mic. He uses it on every singer he works with .. Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Bono, Willie Nelson...I have a video of him producing Emmylou, and that mic is everywhere. She has guest singers coming in like Neil Young and Steve Earl and yep, same mic goes up on eveybody; the Sony C37A.

Ghost Harmonics

Well, I have to start with something, right? I have so much I want to post, that deciding where to begin is hard. So I went to some recent posts of mine on Gearslutz and pretty much randomly grabbed one.

It's choice was not quite random, truth-be-told. I have been listening to a couple CDs I engineered and produced back in '90 and '91 by a band called Anastasia Screamed. This was a very unusual, adventurous band. You could almost call them Avant Garde, and definitely ahead of their time (Pre Nirvana "Never Mind"). The sound-scape we created was that of noisy but flowery guitars, sometimes harmonically beautiful, sometimes clashing and dis-cordant.

http://www.anastasiascreamed.com/index_flash.html
http://www.myspace.com/anastasiascreamed23

We layered electrics (primarily Fenders) and acoustics over multiple tracks. Like, the two guitar-players would both play on the basic track along with the drums and bass, and then I'd have the two of them both do an overdub pass at the same time, often playing different parts and guitars than they had played on the basic. So in two passes we had created four electric tracks. Then we'd do leads and acoustic guitars, feedback tracks, the occasional slide guitar part, and even a dulcimer or mandolin track on a song or two.

The guitar mics we used were SM57, Senn 421, Beyer M500 ribbon (my secret weapon back then, before the whole ribbon revival), and even some very nice vintage condensers, like Neumann U67, M49 and AKG C12. Pres were usually API 512B, along with the desk pres from a Trident 80B and a Neve V. Compression, when used, was usually my standard choice, the Teletronix Urei LA-3A. Nice gear huh? Recording guitar is my love and my specialty anyway, so I was in hog-heaven. And these guys were good players, albiet unorthodox. Funny thing was, they could play everything from country to blues to jazz to Led Zepplin if they felt like it. But their original songs sounded like all of those influneces spun together in some psychedelic Osterizer. The result was challenging alternative rock music, which some might even consider an acquired taste.

So I'm driving around in my car the last couple days, listening to these CDs for the first time in 1o years, and really enjoying what I was hearing, especially the guitars. And knowing full-well there were many guitar tracks, I was hearing sounds-- voices, bells, organs, etc --that I know were NOT part of the recording. And this time I was sober as a judge, unlike when we were creating the recordings. Let's just say there was a lot of "magic" happening in the studio then.

Which brings me to the Gearslutz post:
http://gearslutz.com/board/
Replying to a guy who was hearing a "phone ring" in a mix he was working on.

Phones, choir voices, horns, acoustic guitars, harps, angels...If you DON'T hear those things in your mixes you are unusual. I noticed it much more in the all-analog days, but when all those instruments combine they create overtones and bell-like sounds that become a sounds in-and-of themselves. We called 'em "Ghost Harmonics". I remember one time we were mixing this tune and suddenly this keyboard string kinda synth part just appeared out of nowhere. There were no keys on the tracks. All guitars and vocals. When we played the finished mix for the artist, they actually thought we had added a keyboard part. Nope. Overtones.