4033 or 3050?

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sloom

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I have the opportunity to pick up an AT 4033a in trade for my old TEAC 3340s open-reel deck. I'd been wanting the 3035- got lots of good word on it- but should I (yes I'm asking) do the 40 series instead? There'll be plenty of opportunity to use it, I suppose, as we have a certain degree of acoustic ethic around here. Loud electric, too, but it takes all kinds.

So yes it's a dummy question. Thanks for your time,

Sloom.
 
Removing the 4050 from the mix, I like the 4033 the best of the Audio Tech 4000 (others prefer the 4047). To my ears it has a great presense that none of my other mics possess. Uses include guitar cabs, acoustic guitar(sdc's better but sometimes one of each) and vox
 
Presence is good- I'm doing some overdubbed vox arrangements on some old 4-track recordings, and I'd like them to sort of have their own 'space' on the track. I'm hoping to get some kind of shiny, fun result out of this.

Now, guitar cabs... I'd be shy to jam this in front of my Danelectro Nifty-Fifty (I know- it's not a Marshall), 'cause of blasting the diaphragm. Is my attitude somewhat unwarranted? I mean, it may be obvious that for loud blasting guitar I'd be using a 57, but, you'd still use the 4033 here? How much wind can this little dawg take?

Thanks!
 
The 4033 can take a whole lot of sound level. The concern is not really what it can take but just how much it puts out if you place it close to a loud amp. Even with it's 10db pad engaged it is still going to put out a lot more level than a dynamic mic would.

You have to be careful you don't overload your micpreamp when doing this or you will have some (probably) unpleasant distortion on your recording. It all depends on just how loud your amp is, how close the mic is to it, and how good your micpre is about dealing with really hot levels. An external attenuator (pad) is the solution if your mic level is too hot for your micpreamp. Another slghtly unusual fix would be to plug into a line input rather than a mic input, with a 4033 you would of course need a seperate 48v supply to get phantom power to the mic.
 
I like the 4033 better than the 4050 actually.



Great, versatile mic, for sure.

-my 2 cents....
 
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