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So I just took possession of a Manley Reference Gold tube mic. It's for a session I'm doing over the next week with a singer from Calgary. He wanted to rent it, so we brought it down from Studio Economik from Montreal.
It looks gorgeous out of the case, although it's missing the swivel stand mount, which makes it a bit of a pain to put on a mic stand, but that's just a little thing. We'll see how it sounds tomorrow!

This is exciting! Can't wait to hear about it.

Mmmmmm..... Love microphones.

Well I'm tracking some acoustics right now with Chris my assistant, and man is this mic bright! Not in a bad Chinese way, but in a real silky smooth way. Normally on acoustics I'll add a healthy dose of of 15k or 20k to get the sparkle I'm looking for. Right now I only have about +2dB of 32k on there, and it doesn't really need it, but it does add a touch of air that's nice.

The brightness almost makes the mic sound thin, but I rolled off the top for a minute, and it still has very rich detailed low mids, that I think you could grab whatever you needed out of it. We'll see how it starts to work in the mix, and how "EQable" it is.

Speaking of the mix, the acoustic sounds very "done". Ready to print, with just a touch of verb.

The only thing that worries me slightly, is how this brightness will affect a male vocal. I could totally see it on a female vocal, particularly in a pop/RnB type context, as long as they weren't very sibilant. We'll see tomorrow about how a male vox works. Apparently he's got a very smooth vocal sound, so who knows. I'm very open to having my intuition proven wrong......

macrae11 wrote:.....Right now I only have about +2dB of 32k on there, and it doesn't really need it, but it does add a touch of air that's nice..

Do you have some sort of super sensitive k9 hearing or something?
Even in my younger days I couldn't detect frequencies above 18K.

Jef wrote:

macrae11 wrote:.....Right now I only have about +2dB of 32k on there, and it doesn't really need it, but it does add a touch of air that's nice..

Do you have some sort of super sensitive k9 hearing or something?
Even in my younger days I couldn't detect frequencies above 18K.

Shit.. I was too late for the internet. I was going to nail him for this! Next time Andrew, next time....

It's a high shelf filter, so it affects frequency's below it as well, the more you boost it. The only reason I use 32k as opposed to the 20k setting, is that it seems to have a bit more gentle slope, since most of the boost is happening out of the range of human hearing. 32K is a much more subtle boost, and 2dB at 32k is very subtle.

Frequencies outside of the human range of hearing, can affect frequencies in our range of hearing. It's similar to the reasoning as to why mp3's suck.

And I can still hear 20k, and by that logic I'm assuming a bit above 20k, albeit with a severe rolloff.

macrae11 wrote:blah blah blah...

I know, I'm just messing with ya!

I know youse be messin'. But I thought I'd post it for posterity, for those young and malleable minds who might not quite understand things like that.

Some I'm finally getting around to finishing this thread.

In the end the mic worked out brilliantly. The vocalist had a nice rich baritone with no sibilance issues. When you got up real close it gave you all the proximity effect you would want, but the top end balanced it out very well. He had actually been recommended this mic by the engineer in Nashville, so that's where he got the idea from.

Even after hearing him through the mic, I still thought it was more of a one trick pony, but later in the week I had a couple of clients come in who were, ummmm.... less good. I expected a bit of a disaster, but it was actually the best mic I had ever tried on this particular singer. I thought it would bring out all of the bad parts of their voice, but it actually seemed to smooth everything over.

I'm sure there's something this mic would suck at, but I sure didn't find it in the 10 or so days I had it.

Good to know. I still can't wait to buy a "doesn't suck on anything" vocal mic. We need to do a shootout soon.

So years later we buy the Lawson L251 as an answer to my longing for something that "doesn't suck on anything". So far it doesn't seem to suck on anything (vocals, guitars, drums, bass, ect.) but now that you've had the time to use it quite a bit, how do you find it in comparison to the Manley?

Honestly I used them too far apart to really judge, and I only got to use the Manley on acoustic and vocals. Also they were both used in very different rooms. I would put the Lawson in the same league as the Manley for sure though which is certainly saying something as it's half the price.

One thing I got from the Manley though was almost the sense of compression on acoustic. It was just so phenomenal in the way it handled the transients. It was unnerving at first because it sounded so polished. I never got that sense with the L251, but I also don't think I've tried it in that position for acoustic guitar. It's always been the second mic to the 4051. Will have to try that sometime.

But like I said it's so tough to judge that far apart, and it's hard to say in a different room. I really love my iso booth for acoustic guitars.

Eve Anna gave me a tour of her factory once and when we got to the mic bench it was basically a small little room with some half assembled mics and some testing gear, I asked her where her capsules were being built and she dodged the question.

Not the case here.

Just saying.