Mics for Saxophone

[LVC_Jeff]

I recently tracked sax for a friend's project...the people running the session pulled out the Sennheiser 421 also...it sounded alright, but just alright. Little too squawky for my taste.

Not like the school has any ribbon mics sitting around, though.

[inflatable]

Recently, a first call sax guy in LA reccommended to me what he uses, a Neumann M147. He raves about using also with flute and clarinet. Anyone familiar with this one?

AJ

If you are really cool, you say the M147 is shite compared to a Vintage M47.
Seriously though, any quality LD condensor is gunna sound good. Take a look at any picture of a session with all the Jazz greats. All Neumann in a great sounding studio. I'd say the studio is more than half the sound.

Luckily today, we have various Neumann copies like Gefell (ok so it's actually the original), SoundELUX, Telefunken, etc. so prices are a bit better than 1967. Still, you're gunnna pay a hefty price for good sound.

Pick any 2:
Good
Fast
Cheap

[tonebass11211]

Jack Kidney from the Numbers Band was here a few weeks ago recording with Frank Black and I recorded his tenor with a RCA BK5 into a Brent Avril 1272. That sounded colorful and robust.

[Oldnsaxy]

I've been a sax player for 30+ years. My favorite mics to record with are ribbons. The Coles 4038 is very nice.
I played on a friends album and we used a Royer 121. It came out very good.

I've used the 421 and it works OK. It's good on soprano, which needs some mellowing out. A 441 is better and is used by a lot of sax players as a live mic. Brecker has used this, Bob Mintzer of the Yellowjackets uses one live.

Here is a link to a test I recently did using the wrong mic and a cheap M-Box preamp. The mic is an AKG414TLII mic'd about 1.5 - 2 feet away pointed at the left hand keys. It was a test to play with the Nomad Factory plug-ins' to see if they could do a good job on a clean but not great recording. The sax reverb is two Furman RV-1 springs

http://www.creative-license.com/music/t ... 414tl2.mov

The results are a bit bass heavy, do to proximity and the eq setting I used on the Nomad Factory stuff, but the idea was to get a "personal" up close sound.

[lg]

the gigs i've seen at the jazz bakery most often have used a blue 'mouse' for anything saxlike. always sounds really good to my ears.