Went out to Boulder, Colorado this past week to make a record with a local fella who's been building up his home studio for the past few years and has put together a pretty darn nice space with some choice gear. I was contacted some time ago to help out with the new record and it seemed like he had most everything needed to make it happen - and he was able to borrow everything he was missing so it seemed like something super fun. Imagine, being twenty minutes outside of Boulder in the Mountains. He flew in Lee Alexander and Diego Voglino to play rhythm and had his other guys play their usual instruments, though I wound up playing acoustic on most of the tracks to help lock the rhythm up. I was very psyched when the amazing guys at Wind Over The Earth offered to let us borrow/demo some things, one of which was the 176. This was my first experience with those guys and I could not believe how nice and accommodating they were. True, the artist has been dealing with them for a long time, but to go as far as they did to help him make this record was eye opening. Also, hats off to Craig Calistro. He was also extremely generous, charging next to nothing to rent some of his personal Furman HDS mixers.
So, regarding the 176, I had a chance to play with this box while I was there since Wind Over let us demo it, and I was very impressed with how versatile and how good this box sounded. It really is capable of shaping the sound and in every mode the sound was stellar. I was limited in how deeply I could focus on it, since I was in a foreign monitoring situation and I wasn't mixing but I tried it on bass and vocals and it is a real winner I'd say. No doubt if I had the cash kickin around I would buy a pair. (I have a line on a pair of EQP1A's that are relatively affordable that I'm saving for so these will have to wait.) All in all, very worth a demo.
As a side note: I brought along an M49, a U67 and the Elam 250 I made and was fretting the security rigamarole, flashing forward to some sort of humiliating body cavity search. As it worked, the guys at Laguardia, of course, singled me out for the swab machine. Would you guess that my 67 set off the sensors for explosives?!?! Indeed. One of the more learned fellows there asked if it was an old type of microphone, presumably referencing tubes, and said that sometimes they can set off the machine. Anyway, all was well and I carried them on. FYI, a padded soft food cooler makes a great vessel for transporting these types of things. ...The NTSA guy operating the xray machine in Denver was a musician and knew what they were so no hassle on the way home.
Also, the vocal chain was my old M49, into a TAB-Funkenwerk V72s the artist has (very lucky fellow) into the 176. We tried an old blackface 1176 and an old LA3A. The 176 went the furthest to preserve the natural qualities that came through the mic and mic pre, with the 1176 being much more forward the and leaner sounding. The LA3A was similar in tone as was to be expected, but of course, slightly less colored and less agro. Do love an LA3A I do.
Thats about all for now.
Best,
josh