Hey guys,
So I sent the following email to Glen (international sales rep for Avantone). And below that I have pasted his reply. Seems like a really nice guy and very thorough in his response. Also very interesting information on a recent "showdown" on the Avantone vs. some major brand names. Read below.
my email to Glen
Glen,
I've heard some really good things about the ck-1's and am considering picking up a pair. I will be using them for stereo recording of live concerts. (not sure if you're aware, but these mics are getting some good attention and reviews in the concert taping community). My question is: is it possible to get the ck-1s as a matched pair?
thanks for your time!
Christos
His response
Hi Christos,
No, I wasn’t aware of the attention that they’re getting but I’m very happy about it. I’ve got to tell you that about 5 weeks a very famous producer in Nashville by the name of Ray Kennedy called me and thought that our mics looked very good and wanted to know if I would be willing to do a “shoot-out” against some very serious microphones in his studio “Room and Board”. He also wanted to invite a number of “A team” producers/engineers” on an “invitation only” to hear them. He warned me that whatever the results would be the results. I decided to go for it because as an engineer myself, I’ know how much work we’ve put into our mics. So, the day was set and I went up a day early and Ray and I set up the microphones. He took special care to make sure that all mics were treated exactly the same in terms of levels, distance, etc. He used API mic pre’s going directly to Pro Tools (I’ll tell you more about that in a minute). On the day of the shootout, producers like Jon Tiven, engineer/manager Cory Stone with Pam Tillis and Randy Blevins of Blevins Audio (who is a real expert in vintage mics), were in attendance. It was a great day for Avant Electronics. Our CV-12 tube mic absolutely held up against Neumann U87’s, U47’s and many more, Ray has a beautiful collection of vintage microphones and he really loved our CR-14 dual Ribbon mic even when he put it up against his vintage RCA’s. Our CV-28 tube mic went over big and so did our upcoming CK-40 Stereo Mic (that hasn’t been released yet)… So, finally near the end of the day, we got to the CK-1’s. Ray plugged it up and frankly everybody was stunned at how great it sounded. We compared it against an AKG 452, KM-84 and I believe a 451 also and there was no comparison. Several other high end mics were also tested against it, I honestly can’t recall the others… At one point, we actually went out to make sure that we didn’t have the mic cables crossed. We tried the different capsules and they sound wonderful also. Ray did a very cool thing in Omni mode by pointing the mic toward the guitar and singing over the top of the mic. It sounded perfectly balanced. Sorry for the long story, but because of “The Nashville Shootout”, we sold out of CV-12 tube mics in less than a week, CR-14’s are almost all gone, CV-28’s are selling well, (even the comedian Andy Dick called me yesterday and bought one and placed an order for a CV-12), and CK-1’s seem to be our best bang for the buck mic in our line. I remember prior to going to Nashville, spending time listening to all the mics a lot, and I remember thinking that the CK-1 sounded really great, but even I wasn’t sure, because I only got to do “speaking tests” on that mic.
Now, regarding the Pro Tool recording… Ray Kennedy was meticulous with his documentation and he has all the recordings of each specific Avant mic and the mics that they were compared against. He is working on a DVD for us so people can load the files up and hear them for their selves. We might do a CD so customers can check them out also. What we’re happy about is that we didn’t know Ray Kennedy going into this test and he was totally professional throughout the session. As an engineer myself, I know that there is no “curve” or favoritism on these recordings for any mics. It was an honest test through and through and Ray signed off on it. That’s something that I’ve been told that he simply will not do if it isn’t legit.
Now, to answer your questionJ. No, we do not sell CK-1’s in matched pairs but we set a much tighter tolerance level on all of our microphones including how closely they sound to each other. We’ve actually measured less than 1 dB between CK-1’s, so I honestly don’t think that you will even notice a difference between any two. I’ve listened to lots of CK-1’s as stereo pairs and they just don’t seem to vary hardly at all.
Christos, thank you for your email. Lots of people are just finding out about us; and the real truth is that we’re just a small group of musicians and studio engineers who started this company because we really do want to “give back” to the music industry. If you look at our mics, you’ll see that they’re built better, look better, and we obviously believe, sound better. Then we price them better. We know for a fact that there are companies that are paying no more than we do for their mics, yet they have prices that are more like $799, 899 and even more. That gives them lots of profit and affords them lots of advertising, nice pay checks and great looking web sites, etc. We preferred to give the savings to our dealers and customers and hope that the “old style of selling” will work. My philosophy is simply that if is all the above mentioned things are true, then eventually people will figure it out and support us. We just don’t want 50% of our, (and your), money going to pay for glossy ads, big dinners, $6500 a month webmasters, and grinning business men who could care less about the music. That’s really what we’re about…Do we need to make a living? Of course. Will we? Only if we sell lots of microphones. I call it “the McDonald’s plan. Sell lots of mics, we’ll be OK… Still, we won’t put a 50 cent switch on our mics because the good ones cost $5.00 each, so when you see a silver switch for a pad, roll-off or pattern selection; you can rest assured that we went the extra mile and paid $15.00 for those 3 switches instead of $1.50. This is a fact and the sad part is that the cheap ones look identical. But let me assure you that there are companies that don’t buy the $5.00 switch.
Our saying is “Hey, We’re Avant Electronics and We Hear You”… Perhaps this makes a bit more sense now.
Feel free to share any of this information on your group if you wish and if you decide to buy CK-1’s, then I just want to say “Thank You” in advance… If you like them, please tell folks. You guys support keeps our prices down and allows us to make mics that really do deserve the words “Affordable Excellence” after their name.
Take care,
-glen
some pretty interesting stuff. I think I may just pick up a pair of ck-1s to play around with.
Topic: E-mail from Avantone sales rep (Read 9400 times)