A professional recording engineer told me that his preference for miking a grand piano is to use one stereo mike. (He believes the phase inversion problems are worse than other engineers think). In any event, the stereo mike idea is attractive to me since in addition to recording a piano I intend to record a jazz quartet with no attempt to isolate the instruments, by recording the "room" sound, but also miking individual instruments so that I have some choices with a final mix. (I plan to get a Tascam 788 Portastudio multitrack hardisk recorder). He mentioned one mike in the $10,000-$15,000 range called the AKG C-20, which is WAY out of my price range. He also mentioned the Shure VP88, which has a street price of about $800. I wonder what ideas anyone has on this subject. Any experiences with stereo mikes? Others in the under-$1000 price range? Thank you. ---Jon Easton
Right now (Jan 15, 2000), on eBAy, there is an AKG C422 stereo mic for sale; the current price is $900 and the reserve isn't met. I was involved a number of years ago in a recording project in which one of these mics was used. It's a very good mic with a fairly warm sound, adjustable polar pattern, line preamp and power source. Unfortunately we were recording a harpsichord solo, and the resulting sound was mushy and bottom heavy. We would have been much better off with small diaphram mics. Might work well for piano, though.
