Shadows, the album - the built of microphones

Hi everyone!

No news about the musicians this week. I'm still waiting for a reply from the singer.
I know that it's really hard for a french musician to contact musicians from others countries, I know it's mostly because of of musical reputation...I keep my finger crossed, I really want her on the album.
That said, I'm not really in a hurry, I didn't finish to write the lyrics. I plan to finish them next week.

As you know, I will record the album, in my home studio. I needed some gear. A few people know that a few years ago, I created my brand of gear, I built microphones preamps. No one wanted to buy them, but I still have them and use them. They've been used to record some things recently for the music of the fourth season of The Visitor from the Future.

But because I'm working with a lot of virtual instruments, I don't have a lot of microphones. I have 3: one MXL V67i Tube, one Oktava MC12 and one AKG D7.

I think that I'll use 4 to 6 mics for the recordings, I needed to buy gear.


Mainly for money reasons, but also because I have the knowledge, I decided to go DIY. I bought a kit to build a Neumann U87 Vintage Clone, from Mic&Mod. The price was 5 times less than the original, with some very good components, so i was very interested...

I built them in one afternoon. After that, both of them didn't work properly. One had a directivity problem, the other didn't work at all. After two days of schematics analysis, soldering, desoldering, and a transistor replacement, they both worked.

Of course, I soon tested them, and I wanted to compare with real Neumann. I asked my friend Philippe Miro to come and play for me. In the same time, a studio where I work sometimes lent me a Neumann U87i (this is not a vintage version, but it's still a reference).

Here are the results:
Both mics were side by side. I recorded guitar first, then the voice. There are no effects...
For me, the difference between them doesn't worth an extra 2000€.




I'd like to thank Philippe Miro for this little session. You can hear this song on his album "De tout droit à tordu" on all the download platforms.

Obviously, you could tell me that I only added two mics to my gear, but next time, I'll tell you about the two ribbon microphones I built.

See you soon !