As one who has recorded many platinum selling/grammy winning artists such as Frank Sinatra, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, I was really skeptical when the folks at Studio Projects brought their Chinese mics to my elaborate recording complex. I mean how good could they really be?
I mean, compared to my large, huge, selection of German and Austrian mics, how could they even compare? So I was ready to show these clowns to the door. But, they made the trip to all the way to my 6,000,000,000 dollar studio so I figured I would humour them. Elvin Jones happened to be hanging out (This is right before he died,RIP) so I decided to use some C4's as drum overheads. Elvin is like GOD, so I felt bad even thinking about using a mic that costs less than $3000 on his drums. But, reluctatnly I did. Boy was I surprised. I put a C1 in the sweet spot between the snare, kick, and High hat and The C4 overheads. In one word "Wow!". Elvin was blown away too. He like them so much that he begged Alan for some C4's right there. Of course Alan gave them to him for free. Its Elvin Jones for pete's sake.
So, I thought,this must be a fluke. So, I called Pablo Yo Yo Ma over and to bring his big fiddle with him (thats our pet name for his cello..) He came over and I set him up in the string instument studio of my complex in front of T3 tube mic and let him rip on this tough Bach variation and fugue, and once again, "Wow". Yo was impressed to. How can this be. There must be Neumann or Schoeps guts inside that thing. He's got to be cheating.
So, skeptical, I called up Aretha Franklin and she zipped right over. I thought I would mess with Alan Hyatt and use his cheap ass B1 on her, that should show the warts on these cheap mics. Well, she busted into a slow bluesy version of R.E.S.P.E.C.T. and my jaw hit the floor. That fricken mic is a dyanmite stick. Wow!!!! She heard the playback and says her voice has not sounded so good since Ahmet Ertigun was doing the work.
So for a final test, I used a LSD-2 for a duet I had planned for that day with the great sitarist Ravi Shankar and the hip hop artist Ol' Dirty Bastard. I put them in the same room with the mic between them as they did their thing. The way Ol' Dirty's voice resonated with the drones on Ravi's sitar was pure magic. Granted, it takes artists of this quality to make music of this quality, but the mic sounded just great. The stereo seperation was perfect. Low's were deep with no boom, the highs were clear with no shrill. Ol dirty rolled up the fatest spliff ever after the playback, and he, Ravi, Alan Hyatt, and I got high as fuck and listened back to the playback like 30 times. It just got better each time. I found out that Ravi really knows his mics and all ready owned the whole Studio Project C series. He told me a funny story about going to guitar center to buy a matched pair of okatavis and the guy there giving him a hard time, but I will save that for later.
What can I say. Studio Projects has really come through with some great mics. I will be using his products exclusively from now on.