| Now the bigger boys, mics that
are
so expensive you'll need to make sure you can use them for other
applications such as live recordings to justify the price. Randall
Squires and Douglas Ferguson of The Still recording studios came up
with several of these bad boys, including the Microtech Gefell M296,*
the Neumann KM 143, and Neumann KM 130 omni. Steve Hudson of 5 AM
Studios came up with the Josephson e22s for this test and manufacturers
were nice enough to send me the Earthworks QTC40 and Sennheisers MKH
8020 and 8050. They're all great mics, but with a focus on acoustic guitar I liked the M296 ($1450), the KM 130 ($1350) and the 8020 ($1200) - all omni mics. (*According to Michael Militzer of Gefell the Microtech Gefell M296 uses a 22 mm capsule, which by some people's standards makes it either a large or medium diaphragm capsule in an SDC-looking body. But I don't buy it myself. Anything less than an inch (about 24 mm) is small diaphragm and anything an inch or above is large. Ain't no such thing as medium in my world.) |