What's the most expensive Mic you've ever dropped?

[randrohe]

Happened twice w/ mxl 990.... That's why I have "cheap" mics. I have since added a piece of velcro to the inside of the suspension mount and to the mic capsule. works very well... and so does the mic.
here's a ?
I leave all of my mics set up in our rehersal space, and there is quite a lot of smoking going on in there. tobacco, etc., as opposed to hot riffs.
Do you think the accumulation of tar deposits will make my cheap mics sound "warmer"......
But seriously, I feel a couple hundred dollars in microphones being kept set up and possibly ruined eventually is worth the vibe killing trade off of running around setting things up when everyone is in the zone..
My 2p....................................Rand

[signorMars]

i had to make a flying dive to save a u87 when i tripped over the mic cable once... fortunately the cable was well wrapped on the stand so it did the slow tip thing and it was safe.

far worse was when I set up a vintage Ampeg fliptop bass amp while I was interning and forgot to plug the head into the speaker cab. Fortunately, we discovered it pretty quickly and while it was fairly warm, no damage. Also fortunately, the engineer/studio owner was sympathetic because as an intern he had made the same mistake, only his wasn't discovered until after lunch when the amp got so hot that half the component melted. yikes.

[hughmanatee]

one time i was working with a band recording vocals in my livingroom, a couple of guys in the band stopped by to see how everything was comming alonng, so we were all hangin out in the living room, the bass player spun in one of the chairs and sent my TLM103 flying as it hit the mic stand. the mic stand then smashed against another chair and the 103 impacted against the metal arm of the chair. that was one of my freakout moments, though mostly my fault, you cant help but shit a brick in a situation like that. at the time the 103 was the most expensive piece of gear i owned. also i had a rap group over one time, these guys would bring a case of 40s with them when they would come to the studio. one of them was standing over my shoulder while the other was in the booth, and he dropped a 40 right into my Allen& Heath Mixer/console that was another moment of tragedy, the only thing that happened though was that the direct out of ch13 died, not too bad. the TLM103 works fine

[tonewoods]

Gefell UM70 onto a wooden floor.....

It rattled afterwards, and didn't sound quite right...

Sent it in to their repair people (in NY I think), and it came back perfectly fixed, at no charge....

I've been a huge Gefell fan ever since....

[weatherbox]

Was loading gear for a show maybe six years ago; we were piling it all up behind the van waiting for the drummer to fold down his rear seats and open the back. I went back upstairs to grab more stuff, when I came back down the van was being backed over the case containing my '60s ES335. I think I pretty much teleported into the passenger seat screaming stop! stop! but things were already getting crunchy. He forwarded the van, I pulled the case out from underneath. Miraculously the case was crushed but the van stopped just in time to prevent the neck from being split in two.

With that same group managed to break my arm on my Tele, and then my Tele on the floor (split down the middle... glued it back and it still sounds fine.) Popped the tuning heads out of my Firebird after a quick turn-around smacked the headstock right into a mic stand.

[Judas Jetski]

1980 Ibanez Artist in a gig bag over my shoulder. The upper clasp on the shoulder strap let loose. The guitar essentially pivoted towards the floor and swung face-down onto the concrete, with the entire (14 lb.?) weight of the guitar coming down on the upper right-hand corner of the headstock. I just about croaked. Fortunately, it's a neck-through and suffered only cosmetic damage. Fifteen years later, it plays just fine.

[Martin]

I dropped a Neumann TLM127 recently. No damage done.

Today I dropped an md421. Same deal.

I love being able to say these things.

[fremitus]

A few years back now, I was working live sound for a bunch of country bands and was out on the road with Brooks and Dunn, loads of fun to be sure, beer company sponsor, all that. Sound Image was the company that did all of their stage production and gear, and was the company that employed me. This was my first truly national tour and I was young and having a blast, perhaps too good of a time on occasion.

So, Sound Image makes their own speaker enclosures which are pretty badass actually, giant boxes made of graphite composite and other light but strong materials, loaded with six speakers or more depending on the array, and specific use. So I might have been a little hungover, but I believe we were in Pittsburgh, or may Burgettstown or something like that, some outdoor shed and I was helping a local union member to understand the rigging of said speakers that were to be flown stage left and right for sweet sonic expression. We were on a raked stage which is gently sloped forward towards the audience so that audience members can have a better view of the performances.

These speakers, valued at somewhere in the 4-5K range per box are loaded on and off from the trucks on casters and rolled into place where they are attached to the rigging or speaker above it with nifty little clamps. We're rolling this thing into place and the other fellow is in front of the speaker array and I'm trying to communicate to him amid a din of stage noise, and through a wall of graphite and magnets. He's clearly not hearing me, or at least not responding to my instruction, so I let go of the speaker to peer around and get him on the same page.

To my surprise, he is not in fact there in front of the speaker, but is off to the side and talking with a friend. I walk to him to get his attention, and he turns toward me and immediately shows a face of terror, seeing something behind me. I turn around just in time to watch that shiny box careen off from the seven foot proscenium to the concrete below.

Being the new guy, I was pretty worked up about it, I thought they'd fire me (they didn't), but the crew was pretty chill about it all in all, 'these things happen' (which they do), but I felt absolutely awful at the time for sure. I'm not sure that my pay for that leg of the tour would have even covered that one speaker.

Somehow I feel safer in the studio, but this post has me on guard, that's for sure.

[emrr]

Nothing like this speaker drop to get your adrenaline up.

My fave like this is pushing a tall rack on casters over a dressy carpeted floor, and having a wheel drop into a sunken (!?) floor panel. Nothing like several $K of gear going face down hard. I'm sure the floor box didn't meet any applicable design codes, but that didn't really help.

[asmara]

A Blue baby bottle. at the time it was my most expensive mic and I learned a very important lesson. ALWAYS buy the BEST mic stand you can. There are very few in mpls. believe it or not - all GC mic stands are rubbish. Metro Sound has one that is acceptable. I wish there were more out there..

[rocky]

I once did a 26 hour session which started with the all too frequent 421 slipping out and hitting the deck.
12 hours in i dropped an Re20 and the end grill came off.
16 hours in a U87 and M147 took a tumble, with denting...
then somewhere in the night/early morning a bottle of newcastle brown ale (belonging to the artist) fell into the Control24...
He also spilled a can of coca cola in the control room carpet in the last hour and said:
"just need to spread it out with some water" a minor spill left a 10 foot stain on the floor... ah those were happier days...

My bandmate knocked my minimoog voyager off it's stand onto the concrete floor with a cymbal stand once. I felt the rage.

[vvv]

I was just reminded of the night I was drunk outside of Exit and dropped my silver-face Bassman head off of a Sound City 4x12" (an important detail as those things were freekin' huge).

Lesson: never roll your caster-equipped bottom with the amp on it, especially on a city sidewalk!

Plugged it in the next day and all was well; not even a mark from the 4' fall.

(Bought that head for US$100 in '90, sold it for US$350 in '97; wish I still had it. I literally abandoned the Sound City box - took out the Celestions -in an apartment I was moving out of; damn thing was 100lbs.+ without the drivers.)

[zandurian]

My first serious mic was a 70's model 414, and it was magic, really. About 5 years into our 'relationship' I dropped it - hard, and somehow I knew it was over. Plugged it in and it sounded terrible. I was seriously traumitized.
Since that day (20 years ago) when I drop ANYTHING, my foot automatically shoots out to break it's fall. At least 2 nice mics (one Neumann and one Gefell) were spared similar fates by the amazing sub-conscious foot reaction.
A few days ago I put way too much jelly on my peanut-butter sandwhich. After catching the entire blob squarely on the middle of my right shoe my sixteen year old daughter stared in amazement asking "Why did you do that?"
- byron

[ctmsound]

I work at a music retail store, about a year ago, a customer called up and asked how he could clean a diaphragm of a microphone. I finally got it out of him. Some band was recording an album and the singer barfed into his U87. Projectile vomit style. I withheld from laughing on the phone, but pretty much told him the mic is destroyed.

[AstroDan]

That's funny, Byron.

I can't remember where I heard this, but somewhere/someone had a '58 Gibson 'V' and their girlfriend knocked it over and the headstock broke off. I've wondered how the rest of that day went with that couple...