Mic options for powerful male rock vocals? (ex. Aaron Gillespie style)

R

RyanNanney

New member
I sing powerful vocals in my recordings and want to get a mic that captures the full body of my voice without distorting. Aaron Gillespie's vocals are a similar comparison to my voice in terms of intensity and volume. I had the distortion issue with a samson condenser and used a sm57 for the part instead. it worked at the time, but I'm wanting to know if anyone knows of a mic that can handle fairly high spl's and still sounds pretty good.

I've read up on the Apex 460, MXL 960 and a few others, but would be willing to stretch the price up to around $400 if there's a sweet mic in that range I'd be better off with than the ones I mentioned. I just wanted to give a bit of background info and throw that out there to see what you think.

Thanks for the responses!

youtube The Almost - Southern Weather lyrics for a vocal example of my style if that helps
 
I imagine the SM57 would be really good to get that kind of gritty vocal sound. Are you using a preamp of any kind? Are you using a DAW? Pci card or USB interface? I ask these questions because they weigh in on getting you going in the right direction.
 
I don't really have a suggestion. I think mic technique is important tho. Try standing a good 2 feet away from a microphone without using a pop filter and see how that sounds. Then try getting up on the mic like you're at a live show. Chances are you could get some booms and pops but you could move those (if you're meticulous) to a different track and lower the decibels. Also, try a room with a decent amount of short/medium reverb like a dining room with wooden floors. Helps open up your sound and lets those harmonic frequencies go nuts.

So yeah I'd say large d condenser, but farther away.
 
A shure sm7 (not an sm 57) is my go to Mic for these sorts of things. Using an ldc from two feet away will take care of the distorting problem, but you will loose the in-your-face quality to the vocal.
 
I agree with the big dynamic suggestion, but I had less than stellar results with an sm7b and an mbox 2.

Fair enough, I was mainly doing spoken work, but I found the mbox 2 had far too much hiss when used with dynamic mics and the gain turned up a little.

You may be fine if you're dealing with loud vocals, but just be aware.
 
That could be a concern, but I figured if the guy was distorting LDC's, you might not need that much gain.
 
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