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.