Recording Studio Bespoke Made Microphones
Here at The Coolest Recording Studio in South London – we don’t half enjoy a bit of science! …. which is good – because recording & producing music & audio takes a Lot of science!
Microphones are every recording engineers’ passion – we absolutely love them – be they new designs by modern engineers or classic mics from back in the day that have stood the test of time.
A lot of folks over the years have manufactured & built some quite “out there” mics with an aim to problem solving – or just to stand out from the crowd – but when you work in audio day in day out – you find out what you actually need to get a job done right & proper – & sometimes – the thing you need just doesn’t exist.
Which is why we have our very own Shstudios research & development office.
We started out making the Supra Saturator – kinda like bringing the front end of an analog mixing desk in a small box that you can plug right into your daw & use to saturate you audio in a purely analog way.
Then we needed an ORTF & Binaural microphone for some stereo wide recordings – so we built these bad boys:
Music Audio Production Microphones
The mic on the left was our first build – we used high quality electret capsules & fit them into copper tubes to create our first coppermic!
Sounds superb & is brilliant on acoustic instruments & drums close up if you want a super wide stereo image. Phantom powered so signal to noise is excellent.
We did have one issue though – with some material we needed more information in the centre of the stereo field – so we the developed The King !!!
Same concept as before – a wide stereo field is achieved with left & right capsules – but now we included a centre capsule – & boy does he sound good. Our first test was with Ben Holland recording his new single – we hardly used any post processing on the live recording – he was so pleased we just sprinkled on a bit of eq & compression – & boom – there was the new single !!!
Recording Tiny Angles
This odd looking chap came about because we just could not find a really good powered mic (& we have some top of the range models) for snare drums. We have plenty of dynamic mics that record snares beautifully (shure 545 & 57 – 520i) – but sometimes you want an initimate clarity – to hear the touch of wood to skin. So – we put the little wing together – tried him out – & by the stars – he was everything we could have hoped for.
Super clear – but you can overdrive the capsule really nicely when needed.
It goes without saying that this funky little thing has become our go to “odd” placement mic for all things acoustic – especially Horns!
He sound as amazing on brass as he does on acoustic guitar – & more often than not we’ll choose him over much more expensive microphones.
Winner!
Aint we the clever bunch.
