MICROPHONES

"I tried out several mics on our European tour with Michael Kiwanuka and the real winners for me were the Sontronics DM-1T and the DM-1B. 

"The DM-1Ts were deployed on the percussion player's vintage congas. The DM-1T is so small that you can whack it on a LP claw and you can get it in the tightest of spaces in a busy percussion set-up, and it handles EQ very well. There was actually not too much spill at all, but what there was sounded 'nice' not harsh. I've actually now bought some more to use on all of the close miked percussion! 

"The DM1-B was used in front of the bass amp, in combination with a good DI box. I am not generally a fan of using a bass mic live, as I tend to feel that most kick drum mics are too 'sculpted' sounding to use, and there is too much proximity effect with many of the standard dynamic mics. However, the DM1-B gave me a nice compromise in between these two extremes. It sounded natural, provided super-lows that the DI could not, and didn't muddy the sound at all. 

"I was using APOLLO over the drumkit. I was used to using overheads just to capture the top end of cymbals and relying on close miking for the rest of the drums. However, with this gig it quickly became apparent that the overheads would actually be the main drum mics, as the kit is tuned very 'jazz', and the cymbals are lovely and dry.

 "My approach was to place APOLLO as near the centre of the kit as possible, hi-pass it only up to about 250Hz, and use a fairly aggressive fast attack/release compressor to tame the snare. Being a ribbon mic, the APOLLO required a bit more EQ than a condenser mic might, but the mic really gaive a wonderful 'glue' to the sound of the kit. The stereo image was fantastic. 

"I'd definitely like to deploy the APOLLO in a studio situation, especially to capture room ambience."