m380

[tommy]

Hi,
Im waiting on a recent purchace of a beyer m380. Figure 8 large diaphram dynamic! Anyway, anyone with experience with one of these? Particularly on kick..

[AnalogElectric]

Muddy. I personally didn't like it on anything. I owned one for about two weeks before I sold it. Some people like it but I didn't, obviously. It emphasized frequencies I normally sweep out. When I tried using the mic I thought it was overrated. I suppose if I had a source that was too brittle it might help but the opinion I gained was it sounded like a blown ribbon mic. No real bite to it or lows I could use. I tried it on general sources like kick drum and bass with failing results. I found myself tweaking the bass amp and/or kick drum tuning to the mic's characteristic and it still fell short of usefulness for me.

--Adam Lazlo

[tommy]

I must admit I bought it out of hype and curiosity and the fact that it's just plain pretty to look at. Cant wait to get it to hear whats up. Im sure i'll find something to use it on.

[djimbe]

We have one at our place. I grab it first for bass, 'cause it always seems to work for that. Big ol' (original) SVT through either a 4x10 or 8x10 cab. Mind you, those cabs pretty much stay in the amp closet (ya moved an 8x10 recently?) which is really dead, so the figure 8 doesn't do too much. More often than not, engineers forget to check the amp closet during session clean up, and that's where I usually find it, still set up and connected to the wall box. Tried it on kick once but wasn't too impressed. I didn't have any opinion other than "that's not the sound I want. Lemme grab a different mic..." Adam's right about tweek the bass amp; had to mess with that some for the past weekend's client to get the sound they wanted. Fortunately that SVT has many different sound options living inside of it...

[cgarges]

I used to work at a studio that had an M380 and I really liked it on bass amps and bari sax. Wasn't too crazy about it on kick drum, but I have a Beyer TGX50 that was sort of the M380's replacement. I'm not sure why, because aside from asthetics, they're not that similar. Anyway, the TGX50 is hypercardioid and is a good bit brighter than the 380. I actualy like the TGX50 on kick drum, especially in conjunction with another mic closer to the beater. But I do miss having the 380 around for bass amps. Email me if you don't dig it.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[stapes]

I use one at the studio all the time. It's great on bass amps, especially mixed in with a condenser for the higher detail. I like it on guitar, but sometimes you have to make the amp pretty bright to balance it out. I haven't used it on guitar since I got a Royer, though. I actually really like the 380 on vocals. It's got a great proximity and screwed up sound to draw people into the song. I used it on a girl that no mic was working on. She just had too much wierd high end stuff going on, and the 380 smoothed over a lot of that. I also have not liked it on kick drum, but it makes a massive floor tom mic. One of my favorite uses for it is to put it in the center of the kit, hovering right over the rim of the kick drum, with each face pointing at the floor tom and rack tom. Check your phase with all the other mics, and then run this mic into a sansamp or crazy compressor. Now that's a good sound to mix into a rock kit. I think these mics are fun and very useful. I hope you like it and keep it. I don't know of any other figure eight dynamic mics.

Erik Wofford
Stapes Audio