danger...NTK and Joe Meek...too much tube?

[ruebarb]

Anyone ever run a really good tube mic thru a really good mic preamp and gotten a sound that was too warm?

I'm using a d8B, and I"m pleased with the results and less then pleased with the Joe Meek VCIQCS...just kicking it out there for discussion..

RB

[RevF]

I'm using a Rode NTK with a Joe-Meek VC2 tube pre-amp.
It sounds great - but then the VC2 is not overblown on the tube sound anyway like some newer kit marketed as 'having the tube-sound'.

[tdukex]

I run a 797 Audio CR998 tube mic through a VC1Q CS (no tube), and to my inexperienced ears it sounds fabulous.

http://www.797audio.com/product1.htm

[littledog]

There's a danger of perpetuating stereotyupes here. For instance, just because a mic is made in Germany doesn't automatically make it a superior sounding mic. And just because your gear has tubes doesn't automatically make it "warm/muddy". The quality level of your mic and your preamp have far more to do with the recorded sound than whether it has a tube or not. I regularly run tube mics through tube preamps into tube compressors and get sounds that are fabulously clean and detailed - because all of the above are high quality pieces.

There's no such thing as too many tubes. There IS a such thing as too many crappy pieces of gear in the chain that happen to also have tubes. That famous "warmth" is just a form of distortion, and there are plenty of crappy solid state pieces that can add distortion too, as well as plenty of quality tube pieces that don't (unless you ask them nicely!)