chessrock said:
Perhaps I should re-phrase; the T-3 is a pretty worthwhile mic for the money. But in comparison to a 4060 ... it's a toy. In comparison to other mics in it's price class ... yea, it's great.
I hafta disagree with that; it's a pretty damn nice mic for lots of applications, and far from being "a toy".
chessrock said:
And just because Harvey likes it doesn't automatically mean it's great. I've seen the guy recommend at least a few duds. I've recommended a dud or two myself, so don't take my word as law, either.
But the T3 isn't a dud, so I didn't mean to give that impression.
Here, we agree. As I've said many times, "mics don't know what they're recording". Over the years here, I've tried to spend most of my time trying to explain how mics work, and how to use them, rather than make a lot of specific mic recommendations. The mic is part of a chain, which includes the instrument, the room, the preamp, and the player. All these things will influence the results. I've also said that "mic placement is often more important than mic selection". That's still very true.
I've put up MP3's here, showing what an ECM8000, or an MXL603 can do. I've done whole songs with just a Neumann TLM103 when they first came out. I've shown people how to match mics without test equipment; how to make inexpensive phantom power supplies, pushed people to try omnis and ribbons, and hopefully contributed more here than making people waste their time reading my posts.
If I've recommended a mic in the past, it's because it filled a particular need, did the job well, and/or represent a good value. I always try to point out any upsides and downsides to using any mic I recommend. Audio Technica makes some decent mics - and some not so decent mics; so does Sennheiser and Neumann.
And finally, I'm not a god, making pronouncements from some mountain top; I talk to a lot of major league people in the industry about the mics I recommend - before I recommend them. I'm not gonna name drop, but they're mostly all multi-Grammy winners, with decades of recording experience between them.
But Chess is right; just because I like a particular mic doesn't mean it will be the best choice for your application, and your recording chain. (But it probably won't be a "bad" choice, either.) As Fletcher would say, "YMMV".