Topic: Tube mic recs

[Teen Wolf Blitzer]

Looking for recs on good tube mics.  Looking for no more than maybe 1100 a pair.  Chameleon Labs?

Not worried about powering in the field.  Also am not sure if tubes are suited to live recording or not.  Mostly upclose onstage type of thing is what I do.  Thanks for any info!

[tubems]

i do not know any of the new stock mics, but there are a few guys that make cheap tube mics.  the afforementioned, peluso makes them, forget the rest..

and a pair for under 1100 might be tough to scrape up that is not just a piece of crap, or just sounds lousy, is too sharp if you are recording strings, has muddy bass.  one of my pairs is the neumann-gefell m582 with the nickel card cap(m62 i think) (which i ran today actaully for some acoustic stuff), they go for about 8-900 a piece and you can get a really good PS from hamptone.com.  he makes very very good tube gear, preamps, power supplies and makes custome tube mics, but they are studio stuff.  anyways, you are lookin at over 2 grand with these older mics.

like any mic you want to be sure you are gettin a good capsule in the mic you are buying, same old shit as with any mic.  your just in for a tough battle with a budget of 1100 for this.  there is a company that sells reverse retrofit kits for mics, in that they sell a kit for the akg 451 that converts it to a tube mic using the ck capsules they usually use.  think they call them the 450-tube or something like that. 

sorry cant tell you what exactly to get...

why not try renting different pairs from some place and seein what you like. 

[DSatz]

Do I hate to be a bring-down? I'm not sure, but here I go anyway: There really aren't any good low-cost tube microphones; sorry. If you're paying less than a couple thousand dollars per, you will get distinctly better sound with whatever the best (and most appropriate) type of solid-state microphone is for the kind of recording that you're doing.

One thing to consider might be to make your recordings with clean solid-state gear, and then add the tube flavoring "after the fact" with something such as the Peavey Tube Sweetener. There is something to the tube craze, but if you try to get the sound you want during a live recording where there are no retakes possible, you won't have any way to choose how much coloration or what kind you want; it'll be a total crap shoot with you as the shootee, not the shooter. In a studio recording, you can take the time to find the settings you want so that you get the sound you want. Or if you start from a clean set of tracks, you can add all the seasoning you like--but if you add it to the original recording and you don't like the result, there's no way to subtract it and try again.

--best regards

[Teen Wolf Blitzer]

No those are just the answers I wanted!  Many thanks guys.  t's all around

[newscane]

Do I hate to be a bring-down? I'm not sure, but here I go anyway: There really aren't any good low-cost tube microphones; sorry. If you're paying less than a couple thousand dollars per, you will get distinctly better sound with whatever the best (and most appropriate) type of solid-state microphone is for the kind of recording that you're doing.

One thing to consider might be to make your recordings with clean solid-state gear, and then add the tube flavoring "after the fact" with something such as the Peavey Tube Sweetener. There is something to the tube craze, but if you try to get the sound you want during a live recording where there are no retakes possible, you won't have any way to choose how much coloration or what kind you want; it'll be a total crap shoot with you as the shootee, not the shooter. In a studio recording, you can take the time to find the settings you want so that you get the sound you want. Or if you start from a clean set of tracks, you can add all the seasoning you like--but if you add it to the original recording and you don't like the result, there's no way to subtract it and try again.

--best regards

I've also heard a nice tape made with the Avantone CK-1 mics and this dbx 386 "digital tube" pre-amp:
http://www.zzounds.com/item--DBX386

[DSatz]

newscane, one good-sounding recording might be made in almost any way imaginable. But what is the likelihood of getting good sound the same way the next time, and the time after that? One recording can never answer that question. Only continued use in a number of different recording situations can answer that question.

Most affordable tube-based equipment nowadays uses the tubes as distorting devices, in line with the experiences and tastes which a rock-and-roll guitarist might have with tube amplifiers versus solid-state amplifiers when they're overdriven. The effect depends on the gain settings and on how loud the sound is when it reaches your microphones, on its frequency content (its "spectral balance"), on how much distortion there already is, and the acoustics of the room. Yes, of course the result might be really great on one recording--if so, then what a relief: the levels and settings were good for that one recording. It's fortunate that the drummer or the singer didn't play or sing 3 or 4 dB louder than expected, and that the walls of the room absorbed and reflected the sound in the way that they did.

But what if it's different the next time? If you anticipate it, you're golden; if you don't, you'll be disappointed; if you anticipate it but then the thing you anticipated doesn't happen in the way you anticipated it, you won't get the color you want. I'm just saying: it's better if you choose an approach that doesn't commit you in advance to what exactly the performers are going to do that night--since if they're human and you're not God, you never know.

That gamble is part of the excitement, I know, but I'm sure that it also results in many recordings that people don't post on line. To get a realistic view of a recording technique or a set of equipment, you need to hear what it does when used inappropriately, and to find out what recording situations are "exactly wrong" for it so that you can choose something different--or maybe choose knowingly to go with what's "exactly wrong," and enjoy beating the odds if you happen to win.

My sense is that people will be particularly inclined to put a recording up on line in this last case, precisely because that gamble doesn't usually pay off well. Do people ever post their "blooper reel" recordings--the ones that make you groan with regret at having made them so badly? Aren't there Web sites in which people can post anonymous confessions of bad things they've done and said? Something like that, for recordings ruined by our own stupid mistakes, might be very good for the soul and instructive to others.

--best regards