Well, if Harvey's got a plan, I'm all ears. I would certainly defer to his massive experience in these matters. So Harvey, how would you go about an A-B-C vocal mic comparison? My concern is that if you place the mics far enough away that their pickup patterns are not relevent, you're using the mics at a distance that most singers would never use the mics at. That might tell you how good they are for mic'ing choirs, but lead singers use proximity as a tool, and to use the tool, you have to be able to move in and out of the proximity field. Vocals are not a static sound source that is captured like a snapshot, except at considerable distances, as in Broadway style overhead mic'ing.
I'm not interested in how good NTK is for a Broadway overhead, I want to know how it is as a vocal recording condenser. Ny guess is, if you let a good singer *use* these tools, NTK will usually annhialate similarly priced competion. Of course, both of the others you are testing are excellent mics, and some singers actually suck on a tube mic. For myself, it depends on the mix. Some songs just want a FET mic, and some songs want a tube mic. Mostly, I've been recording with NTK and C-3, but I'm now going over most of the tracks done with C-3 and re-tracking them with a B.L.U.E. KIWI, because I can.
If there's any pattern I've found, it's this- If the guitar was tracked with mics through a clean pre, usually the FET mic wins in the shootout. If the guitar was tracked DI through Joemeek, or an electric guitar is involved, NTK is the mic of choice. So I guess I'm matching a colored mic to a colored backing track, and a more transparent mic with a clean track. For a better A-B, you may want to track something folky and acoustic, and something bluesy and electric.
Oddly enough, when neither the KIWI or NTK sounds right, the replacement is Shure SM82, an obsolete line-level broadcast mic I bought for $10 at a flea market! It sort of sounds like what an SM7 would sound like, if it was a condenser mic. In short it rocks, standing up very well against NTK and B.L.U.E. KIWI, which is tough competition. It's not that big a surprise when you figure that when the last one was made in 1989, it was a $700 condenser mic.-Richie
