So, living in Nashville is pretty amazing if you have a studio. Great musicians are available all the time, you can rent gear from several outlets for reasonable prices, and the there are many world-class techs available to repair, renovate, or modify your gear when needed. On that last score, I have been self-modifying several of my microphones, soldering better capsules and capacitors into my Rode N2 and into a Studio Projects B3 large diaphragm microphone.
After using my Miktek CV4 for a couple of years, and basically loving it for most things, I found that I kept trying to equalize a little high end “zing” – evidently due to the way the capsule interacts with the tube electronics in the body of the mic. I read a Tape Op magazine article about a microphone tech in Nashville named Shannon Rhoades, a guy who used to actually work at MikTek, who could do a killer modification on the CV4. After listening to some digital files of the results he is able to achieve, I bit the bullet (literally – this was not cheap) and decided to go for it. I emailed him and then packed up my CV4 and drove it over to his house. When I walked in, I shuffled past a dog, and a guy coming out of the back workroom with a microphone modified for Martina McBride (I believe it was her, or maybe it was Shania Twain), and met Shannon in the workroom Here’s a little video from YouTube of an interview with Shannon in that room (scroll to about 5:45).
The room was full of microphones, all being modified and personalized for various country luminaries, and Shannon asked me a few questions about what I was looking for in the mic. He got the drift, I left, and he went to work. Two weeks later I returned, paid him through PayPal, picked up the microphone and put it into action recording the Flat River Band (a post to come about that later).
After nearly a year with the modified microphone, using it on vocals, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, and as a room mic, I have to say that it was worth every penny. What was a really, really good $1600.00 tube condenser mic, was now close to a world-class microphone – the kind you’d pay 8 to 10 grand to use. It has that huge, larger than life, “suck you in sound”, with a silky high end, tight and controlled midrange, full and flowery low end that is really nice to have on most vocals and featured instruments. It reminds me a lot of a Telefunken C12, and for about 1/3 of the price. Check Shannon out at https://www.facebook.com/Micrehab/
JonyMac Studio 