Received a lovely new tube mic last week, so have been testing it out. Read my fave H.P. Lovecraft short story, ‘The Outsider’. All comments gratefully appreciated!
http://hermetechmastering.com/Mixes/TheOutsiderbyHPLovecraftReadByGreggHermetech.mp3
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Wow! What a fantastic voice! And the mic sounds fantastic! What mic did you get?
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Wow, that’s a great sounding mic at a great price. The TG2 certainly doesn’t hurt! I track pretty much everything through the TG2. Lately I’ve been using a Microtech Gefell UMT70s for my solid-state vocal mic and a vintage Gefell UM92 for tubey sounds. Both are based on Georg Neumann’s legendary M7 capsule. The latter was purchased from a studio in Phoenix where a friend of mine used to work. They used that very mic to record vocals on records by Glenn Campbell, Billy Preston, and Alice Cooper to name but a few. That’s some serious DNA splashed across that capsule! Yours sounds a lot more ‘vibey’ than the Gefell, though. Really impressed. And by your voice! Oh my gosh, it sounds so good!
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I have chain envy 
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Yes, been wanting a decent, versatile, “vintage sounding”, tube LDC for years, did loads of research recently and decided on this. Very happy so far. Still a bit sibilant for my liking, but I need to do some tests to work out if it’s my voice, the mic, the position or the pre.
I’ve had the TG2 since 2009, and it’s been used on nearly every track (thousands and thousands) I’ve mastered since then, as make-up gain for the Pullet passive EQ. I love it. I sometimes think about replacing it with something cleaner/more transparent, but the thought never lasts long. It just almost always sounds right.
Yeah, this CM48T is based on a Neumann 47 and 48. Never used an original so no idea how close it sounds, and TBH not bothered, just wanted a nice vintagey sounding tube mic, and I think it delivers in that department. Almost sounds like it has vibe, compression and EQ built in.
This track was CM48T (HPF engaged) into Chandler TG2 (300 Ohm, 40dB gain) preamp into Crookwood mastering console/ADC into iZotope RX5 Advanced. I used the Rycote shock and pop you can see in the pic, and had it a few inches below my mouth pointing up. I want to try it above and pointing down too, to see if I can tame the sibilance a bit. Mono recording at 24/96, then a little noise reduction, clipping & normalisation for level, SRCd and dithered down to 16 bit 44.1 kHz before conversion to 128kbps MP3.
Thanks for kind words on voice! Was an English teacher for 12 years and have had lots of practice reading to my daughter. Also did radio DJing at uni and had a show on FutureMusicFM in the UK a couple of years ago too. Put me in front of a camera or video camera, or try to make me sing, and I’ll run a million miles away, but I do love talking. 
The chain is indeed a good one, luckily has paid for itself over the years!
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Thank you!
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It absolutely delivers! You sound soooo good. Very vintage sounding (I have used a vintage Telefunken U47 on exactly one occasion. It wasn’t mine. Sigh.)
I doubt the TG2 is the source of your sibilance (which I totally did not notice, by the way). I wear a denture that causes a huge amount of sibilance and have to be very careful about such things. The TG2 has never given me any trouble in that regard.
My own vocal chain has been UM92 or UMT70s through the TG2 and then a vintage LA-3A. Lately I might apply a bit of Warm Audio EQP-Wa and sometimes their WA-2A (Can’t justify the vintage units for my crap voice!)
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Cheers Scot, glad it’s sounding good to you, I trust your judgement & experience! The only other tube mic I ever owned was an MXL V69ME, which was kinda OK (bit spitty high end), but this feels and sounds like a different league (from what I can remember, I sold it six years ago). Only other mics I have experience with are SM57, SM58, & SM7b (all great), SM81 (HORRID!), C1000S (HORRID!), and I also recently bought a pair of Line Audio CM3 SDCs, which are the most natural/transparent sounding mics I’ve ever used (and again very reasonably priced). I have a Rode stereo bar for them for NOS, ORTF, A/B, X/Y etc.
Yeah, I’m pleased with how this 48T sounds direct, really feels like it has compression/smoothing built in, must be the tube and tranny. I haven’t tried it through the Chandler germanium compressors yet, kinda feel like there’s not much need, at least for spoken word/VO etc. The SM7b also has that kinda built in compressed feeling.
AA also do a DM20 which apparently does the RE20 and SM7b really well, but again for a fraction of the price, so may very well pick that up soon:
http://advancedaudio.ca/products/dm20
Yeah, sibilance not killer (it was worse when I used some different settings and positions before), but I would still like it reduced a little more, but reckon the proposed “above, but pointing down at the mouth” position may just be the audio nirvana I seek, fingers crossed, will try it this week, and put a CM3 up next to it to compare.
Aren’t vintage U47’s like $12k a piece now or something? And the tubes are unobtanium (even though some are still going fine after 60 years).
You know what, I was TOTALLY sold on the new WA87 mic, until I started digging into tube mics, and had to put my budget way up, but then discovered AA, and realised I could get something with the same functions, but tube, for cheaper… And am very glad I did (although I’m sure the WA87 is a fine mic too).
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may i use your great voice and fine story-telling as OT-food? just parts of it, and mangle it?
i ask because otherwise it would not be polite
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Only if you let me hear the results… Of course!
Could up a lossless version tomorrow, if you’d prefer?
Yeah, people pay crazy prices for a vintage U47. A good one sounds fantastic, though. It’s hardly the only costly vintage mic out there, though, and really, not nearly as much as the rest of the chain could be. If I could, I would, but I can’t so I don’t. 
My dreams are much more down to earth. I’ve always wanted a good CMV563. The UM92 I have is very much the direct descendent, though, having been a slight re-working of Gefell’s limited UM57 re-issue (the UM57 being the successor to the CMV563) and it was my attempts to land a CMV563 that ended me up with the UM92.
Warm Audio make decent stuff. I have a lot (WA-2A, WA76, and 2 x EQP-WA). They sound good and the build quality isn’t terrible. I really love the sound of the EQP-WA. So much so that I’d ordered the second within minutes of unboxing the first one I got.
I think you mad a good decision with the tube mic. I think the TG2 pairs very well with tube mics - though admittedly that might be a preference built upon immersive exposure to tracks made in EMI studios.
I want a Chandler Microphone Cassette so very much. I’m trying not to spend a load of money on my studio, though…
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oh no, thank you, that is good enough
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@Hermetech is quite modest…he’s actually a professional mastering engineer, and a damn good one at that.
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Yeah I checked his website Might be in touch with some poss work for him at some point…
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@Scot_Solida My mic knowledge is very low! I have another friend who uses WA stuff and rates it highly.
@Accent Blushes…
@Callofthevoid That would be great!
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My voice isn’t much, but I have a soft spot for a great microphone. Probably because a great one was so hard to come by for anything like an affordable price when I was starting out 35 years ago. There were no affordable large diaphragm condensers back then - it would be another fifteen years before those started hitting the market and by that point the already-high cost of buying a good vintage mic had skyrocketed. Luckily my best friend owned a studio in Phoenix and I had access to some good ones - even if I couldn’t take them home!
The WA stuff is, as they say, good for the price - well, it’s great for the price. I’d probably still keep their EQPWAs even if I had a pair of Pultecs sitting next to them, and their WA-2A and WA76 give me what I want from an LA-2A and 1176 for less than the price of one 1176 alone. I’m not saying I wouldn’t rather have an LA-2A and an 1176, but I’d rather have the $4000 difference for other things right now.
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Yes, the economics of studio gear has been great for home recordists over the last 30 years or so.
Tried that CM48T mic on acoustic guitar, shot it out against the CM3 (SDC) on that and my spoken word again. The difference was HUGE, unbelievable really! Both sound good but so different. The tube mic has so much more character and sounds much more like “a record” from the 70’s or something. Big smiles. My fave acoustic guitar tone of all time is on Crosby’s “Laughing” from “If I Could Only Remember My Name”, which was a Neumann tube SDC if I remember correctly. Anyway, this came much closer to that than anything else I had tried before. On the other hand, the CM3s are used a lot by people in XY, ORTF, NOS etc. for very neutral classical recordings and field recordings.
And that lovely difference is why I will never have enough money to buy all of the mics I want… 
One of my favorite guitar mics (any acoustic stringed instrument) is a cheap copper Peavey ribbon mic that I bought for $179. I ripped out the stock transformer and replaced it with a Lundahl. It sounds lovely.
I like mic’ing up synths and drum machines through keyboard amps or small monitors! Try it! Mics and mic placement are my favorite EQs!
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