vocal mic for clean, smooth voice

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bleyrad

New member
i hear a lot on this forum about good vocal microphones for gritty voices. there seems to be a lot of "do NOT use this microphone for clean, smooth voices" going around. well, okay, so now i know what not to use.

but what SHOULD i use? it's for an album project so we could rent pretty much anything reasonable, be it a neumann or whatever. this isn't a "budget microphone" question.

thanks.
 
I would check out as many different mics as you can{with the vocalist} from the rental Co...Soundelux U47 and Soundelux Telfunken 251 jobs for example and maybe some of the Brauners...Neum.149...There are so many choices..Also see about renting a really nice mic pre again so many choices..Good luck



Don
 
bleyrad said:
i hear a lot on this forum about good vocal microphones for gritty voices. there seems to be a lot of "do NOT use this microphone for clean, smooth voices" going around. well, okay, so now i know what not to use.

but what SHOULD i use? it's for an album project so we could rent pretty much anything reasonable, be it a neumann or whatever. this isn't a "budget microphone" question.

thanks.
Click to expand...

you might look at the rode classic then. it's got a rep as a nice r&b mic. can't go wrong with a blue kiwi.
 
Neumann U87, B.L.U.E. KIWI, any really good FET mic through a really clean preamp (Avalon, Neve, etc.) If you got smooth and clean, and you want to keep it that way, stay away from tube mics unless you're looking for vintage sound.-Richie
 
Clean/smooth voices tend to be more sonically exposed-meaning you can
hear if they're off track quicker than say Bob Dylan. :)
Also, there's a big difference between a "dark" smooth singer like Bing Crosby
or Nat King Cole, and a "bright" one like Steve Perry.
Therefore, in a sense, it's even more important to have your singer audition
a number of microphones to hear what's working on a given voice.
In addition to condensers and dynamics, you may want to try out ribbon
microphones too, like a Royer, RCA, Beyer, or Coles.

Chris
 
Do you have access to any music stores near you!!??

Usually you can give an audition to the many fine mics suitable for your voice and do an A/B/C comparison!

Sam Ash lets you perform such auditions!
 
well, i'm not so certain we'd want to keep his voice completely nice and clean.
last time, we used a Rode NT1000 with very poor results. my NT1 sounds better on his voice, actually.
it was way too thin, way too smooth and upper-rangy.
for that reason, i AM interested in trying out some tube mics on him, though i have no idea exactly what effect it's going to have... i've never even heard/used a tube mic on anything before.

i live in Vancouver, Canada, and very few music stores here seem to be cool with auditioning, for some reason. they're all snobby drunks.
 
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