MXL 603 - massive Marik mod

[antichef]

I just hooked up my pair of MXL 603s that Marik modded by changing around the electronics (but they're still transformerless) and re-machining the capsules. I sent them off to him right before I moved houses and shut down my studio for awhile, so when they came back they sat in a drawer at my work for a while. I just brought back some studio stuff from storage yesterday, and don't yet have a good/dedicated room, but was able to do a little. Also, my main acoustic guitar is still in storage, and my backup dreadnought is in the shop, so all I have is a Art & Lutherie AMI Cherry parlor guitar (~$150 new) with dull strings - how far we fall (ok, not that far, really )

Anyway, I like the mics, and it's a little early to pronounce anything, but I suspect I'll be using them as my primary SDC pair. I'm bummed they just sat there for so long, but that's life in home-studio-land.

If anyone's interested, I can post a little track -- untreated and very live room, lots of background noise, etc. - you get it -- otherwise, I'm sure I'll be posting some more carefully recorded stuff in the future. Despite the lack of recording-discipline, I'm getting a very nice and full sound from the mics, in my opinion.

 

[PhilGood]

Post away! I'd love to hear them!

 

[darrin_h2000]

One of the reasons Im holding on to my pair of 603s is because some of the guys doing the mods claim that they will sound like Neumanns...Im just curious if that will be worth the money.

BTW...does anyone mod decent mics like AKG...AT...Shure?

 

[antichef]

ah! the N word -- just posting this because I don't think we've heard these yet (and I don't have Neumanns to compare) -- again, I kind of suck for doing it, because the conditions were so poor - but I sat on these for so long, that I was starting to suck for not posting, so I think maybe this is the way of sucking less. Again, I've still got a way to go before I can make good recordings, but these mics will help!

here's the details:

stereo XY about 8 inches back from the 14th fret of this parlor sized guitar with too old strings -- no real attention given to mic placement, except that I usually get good results this way with other mics and other guitars.

I couldn't find my best cables, but I doubt there's much of a difference -- they go through about 5 feet of cable into channels 1 and 2 of my Black Lion Audio modded MOTU traveler, then into Logic Express. 24/96

I went for finger picking first, then tried to push them a little with pick - I almost zeroed out the converter but not quite -- you can hear my wife trying to get my attention, and then my 2 year old trying to get her attention (for a "bottle of milk") - sorry about that - like I said, more later, and lots more once I get my dedicated room built. I should get back the backup dreadnought within a week, then I can try some loud strumming with more sensible gain staging. In the meantime, just know that the first part of the recording below is probably the only valid part.

here's an MP3 - about 1.6 megs:

and for the bandwidth endowed, here's the wav file, about 49 megs: http://www.recursor.net/mxl603modded.wav

BTW...does anyone mod decent mics like AKG...AT...Shure?

yes, but what if you mess them up? I've got a pair of AKG C451 E mics that I've done some capacitor swaps on (to replace old bad ones), but no mods, really -- the good mics usually already have a good thing going on, so there's less reason to mess with them, imo. To be fair, what Marik did to these 603s is above and beyond what I normally think of as mods -- his stated goal was never to make them comparable a particular hi end model, but rather to get them into some zone of performance he had in mind -- if I was educinated enough to specify what I wanted, he would have shot for that. It was also more about the end result than about a particular measure of improvement. I can say that these are basically different (and unquestionably much better) mics from what I sent to him.

I had already done a capacitor swap (for better components) with these 603s, but my work went out the window when Marik overhauled them.

 

[JRSIV]

They sounded pretty good! No distortion on the hard strummed part and they captured the room sound just enough. The little milk discussion at the end was well recorded too...