Neumann M 49 At Chicago Recording Company: Zen And The Art Of Microphone Maintenance
Chris Shepard removes yet another of CRC's seemingly endless supply of priceless microphones from its case for Gearwire to gawk at. This time it's a Neumann M 49; Chris talks a little about the mic's inherent sonic character, and at which applications it excels.
By all accounts, vintage mic caretaking seems like a full-time job in and of itself. How Chris finds time for the rest of his managerial responsibilities -- and engineer sessions -- is anybody's guess. My guess is that Chris had himself duplicated sometime in the mid-nineties. You'll notice that the lean of his coif varies from video to video.
CHRIS SHEPARD: Microphones are really the trick of the trade. Having a great microphone collection is probably the most important.
This is just part of our CRC microphone collection. A lot of the vintage mics, they take a lot of care, so we keep them in their own cases so we can keep the individual cables and power supplies together because one looks like the next looks like the next. It’s very difficult sometimes to know, and the connectors are all very odd, odd connectors.
These microphones get cycled through Neumann regularly for cleaning and also for the power supplies and things. Right now, they have our KM 56s which are a beautiful pair of microphones. This one first on the end we start here, this is an M49, really beautiful open vocal mic. A lot of times this is used for vocals, also drums, bass. It really has a very good proximity effect, when you get a singer really close to it. A really warm microphone, when people say a warm microphone this is a really a great example of it, and it’s an M49.
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