Hello guys,
I'm glen heffner - national-international sales manager with Avant Electronics and I received an email yesterday from one of your members. Today, he wrote me back and suggested that I check the forum out and I'm glad that I did. First of all, I want you to know that I don't do much in the way of live stereo recording since most of my recording was 24 track studio work and then on to digital workstations. But I remember some of my favorite sessions were when we could convince bands to let us do a two-track recording session instead of a multi-track one. It took much longer to set up since we would work with effects, eq (if necessary), compression and so on, but we got to "shape" the sound. Of course, we used multiple mics but we had to deal with "bleeding" and it was much different from working a 24 track session. It was great fun!
When I was fortunate enough to to do remote 2 track recording, I almost always used a pair of Neuman U-64's which I loved. I mostly recorded orchestra projects with just those mics, brought the 2 track masters back to the studio, dumped them onto the 24 track and then would often overdub a string quartet or additional instruments onto the tracks. The 1st recording that I did was exactly as described above, (for the Miss Noth Carolina Beauty Contest), and I was absolutely scared to death as to how the mix would sound. Back then, I mixed on JBL 4311's, but one of my assistants told me not to worry because he had just the speakers to mix on. So, he left, and in about 15 minutes he was back with a pair of JC Penny speakers. I finally was able to speak and I said something like "are you crazy" and his exact words were "these speakers sound just like myr Magnavox Color TV". Well, we hooked them up, I mixed only with those speakers and about a week later, I heard the results and, (now, I'm going to brag), it sounded great on my RCA Color Television too. I didn't have the advantage of Auratones or our own MixCubes of today...
Sorry, I didn't mean to invade your space with my stories. But I did want to do is address the "O" rings in the SSM Shock Mount that comes with the CK-1 because there seems to be a bit of confusion about them. We actually sell the SSM Shock Mount seperately at a price of $29.99 and that is one of the nice additions that you get with the CK-1. However, when you buy the SSM from a store, it is in a plastic, hanging wall display. The same amount of "O" rings are attached to the SSM plus there are an additional 4 included, in case you lose them. The reason that we have all the "O" rings on the SSM is because we felt that was the best place for them. Actually, they are quite sturdy and should last a long time. No, you most certainly don't need all of the rings on the CK-1 at one time although you will get the best isolation using all of them!
A few more things I should mention is that I don't get to visit forums very often but I want
ALL OF YOU to know that we, as a company, sincerely appreciate your comments, both positive and negative. We really try to "catch" everything possible, but for example, the Cardioid cap was just a bigger cap. It is usually the default capsule in studios, so we had a choice; either get a plastic case that would hold the Card but that would allow the smaller cap to bounce around. So the biggest cap ended up on the CK-1 and we used the plastic case to hold the other two, which were the same size.
FYI, all of our microphones, our MixCube monitors and studio accessories carry a 5 year warranty! (So don't worry about those "O" rings:-) The only thing that isn't covered for 5 years in our line are the ribbons in our CR-14 Ribbon Mic, but that's because ribbons can be damaged in many different ways, (like not using a pop-filter when singing through it) and trying to warranty a ribbon mic to someone who doesn't understand ribbon mics would be a very expensive problem for any company. However, Avant Electronics will re-ribbon the mic at cost for our customers.
Last, but not least, I want to say that after reading through the messages in this group; it is really apparent to me that you guys are very knowledgeable. I was also very impressed with the recording(s) that I heard that a couple of you were getting from "less than perfect" sound systems and still you made it sound really good. Honestly, I'm excited "tapers", (I guess that's an appropriate term), are considering using our mics. As a sales manager, I'm excited to discover this area that I had not even considered before. But now that I'm aware, I will make sure that we, Avant Electronics, will "take note" of what you guys do. You all sound like great people and it feels good to get my eyes opened further. For this, I thank you all.
Oh, if you made it all the way down to here, I want to let you know that the gentleman who first contacted me has a link with my original response to him at:
http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,82944.0.htmlwhere our Stereo CK-40 microphone is mentioned. I'm going to attempt to put a picture of it up there for you along with some data. It lists for $599 but sounded fantastic at the "Nashville Shootout". The special secret is that we also have another Stereo Mic called the CK-33 that wasn't even introduced at NAMM. The main difference is that it is a 32mm Capsule vs. a 35 mm and it is Cardioid only. It will retail for $399 They look almost idential with the exception of silver switches on the CK-40. Anyway, I'm going to attempt to put up some information on the page link.
Again, I appreciate ALL of your comments and you can bet that we will be pro-active to in our mic design work going forward now that we see what you guys do!
-glen heffner
national-international sales manager
Avant Electronics
www.avantelectronics.com
