Recording - December 2016 - 37

Electro-Voice RE1
I've written a lot about this mic over the years; it's still my "desert island" microphone
that will do more things well than any other I own. Some 20 years ago E-V dropped it
from the line, while keeping its RE16 sibling, which has a built-in pop filter and a small
upper-range peak, and is a superb general-purpose vocal mic. At an AES meeting, I
asked an E-V rep how they decided which one to keep, and he said, "We tossed a
coin."
Well, I think the coin landed the wrong way; the RE16 is certainly a great mic, and I
use it all the time on vocals, but the RE15 can be used on all sorts of things. The RE15
was reportedly used by Stax for recording kick; it close-miked the drums (including cymbals) on The Band's much-admired "Brown Album"; and it recorded piano on Bob
Dylan's Planet Waves. I've used it on just about every instrument you can name, including acoustic guitar (it's hypercardioid, but like the D224E it has little or no proximity
effect, so it won't "woof out" on a Dreadnaught), male vocals (and a few female), guitar
cabs, kick, small percussion, and even a violin that was too screechy with every other
mic in the kit.
The frequency response looks like a Neumann U 87's, except that it drops steeply
above 13 kHz. This means I seldom have to worry that it'll sound thin, and it has
worked like a champ on vocalists with nasal resonances who sound bad on U 87s,
which have a resonant peak right where their noses are.
Country singer Dolly Parton reportedly had an RE15 reserved for her in a safe at
RCA's Nashville studio, and it was the mic Elvis Presley used for his live shows for
many years. Several lived at Chicago's Playboy Club for use by jazz musicians (I own one of those mics, thanks to Ebay). The
RE15 is not "vintage" sounding, though, but simply a top-quality professional mic. And no, chopping the pop filter off an RE16
doesn't make it into an RE15; the capsules were a little different.
I bought one of the last new ones, and I want it back on the market (along with its RE16 sibling). In this overbright world, its
neutrality would be welcome.

Electro-Voice RE55
Another rare bird: a dynamic omnidirectional
microphone that is flat, flat, flat. How flat? Flat ±3 dB
from 40 Hz all the way to 20 kHz. Flat enough that
E-V offered to provide calibration curves for those
wanting to use the RE55 as a measurement microphone. And of course, because the RE55 is omni,
there's no change in frequency response with changing distances-in other words, no proximity effect.
What's a mic like that good for in modern recording? Well... you've probably seen bluegrass bass players performing with a mic wrapped in foam and jammed into the bridge
of a string bass. It's convenient, but usually sounds subpar, as they're typically using a cardioid mic, and proximity effect makes
the result impossibly boomy... which an engineer can try to EQ out, but then it often sounds like there's no bottom at all.
My Webster colleague Boris Golynskiy found that the technique can work admirably, though, if the mic used is an omni, with
no proximity effect. He used a Neumann KM 130, I've used an Oktava MC-012 with its omni capsule installed, and I bet the
RE55 would sound great for this application. String basses have surprising amounts of high frequency signal in their sound, and
the RE55 (with its extended top end) would catch them well. As a dynamic mic, it doesn't need phantom power, useful for live
gigs with phantomless PA systems (yes, there are still a few of those out there). If you're overdubbing in a good room, this might
be a great choice for acoustic guitar, or offer a different take on drums (including kick).
This was one of the high-achieving dynamic mic designs created by E-V's Lou Burroughs, who also developed the RE15, RE16 and
RE20. It deserves another go-round; it might pair better with digital recording systems than many overbright budget condenser mics.

Nakamichi CM-100
This one's obscure enough that most of today's engineers have never seen one, though
it had a vogue among the "tapers" who recorded Grateful Dead concerts. It was a
small-diaphragm electret condenser mic system with interchangeable cardioid and omni
capsules (like the Neumann KM 80 series or the Oktava MC-012), but with one crucial
difference which endeared it to the tapers: you could use it without phantom power,
because its head amplifier was powered by a single AA battery. (The capsules, being
electrets, didn't need any juice.) The battery's low voltage meant that the mic would distort if the sound got over +118 dB SPL, but a switchable 10 dB attenuator extended that
to +128 dB SPL. There was also a switchable lowcut filter to deal with proximity effect
when the cardioid capsule was used and the mic was close to a source.
I had the chance to use a couple of these guys when I recorded in Paul Goelz's
home studio in Evanston, IL, and found that they were remarkably close in sonics to
Neumann KM 84s, though they cost way less. Nakamichi beat the SPL issue with the
RECORDING DECEMBER 2016

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