"I was looking around for mics for my studio and heard about Sontronics through some muso friends I have a lot of respect for. When it came to choosing mics for my studio, I needed mics I could trust to deliver quality every time. When I had the opportunity to try Sontronics for the first time, I was blown away!
"I use a DM-1B on my kick, DM-1S on snare top, DM-1Ts on toms, STC-1 with a Hyper capsule on my hats (and occasionally in a pair for overheads) and two ORPHEUS for overheads both in the studio and live. Primarily I've been using them to record in my home studio in Reading. The response has been great, with producers being happy with the results and coming back for more. Projects of late that have featured the mics have included alt hip hop artist Polar Bear (an amazing spoken word guy) and producer Yila, some audio library stuff for producer Freethos, and the Tomcats, a jazz quartet that I often work with. "When I take the mics to other studios, the experience can be different with a different room and a different engineer in control, but the results are consistently outstanding. In live settings the feedback from engineers has always been enthusiastic and positive.
"They sound great on my kits... I'm a sucker for tuning and using various dampening and tuning methods to get the drums to sound and feel great in the room. What I love about Sontronics mics is they're so accurate at capturing what I can hear when I'm sat at the drums.
"Each mic perfectly captures the drums they were intended for. For instance, the DM-1B has a boost at 100Hz that is perfect for a great kick sound! The ORPHEUS I've found to have clarity, presence and 'air' in the high end. At the lower end of the spectrum, I've found it to have great detail in the 1.5 to 5Hz range, which I've found really helpful. It takes no prisoners too! When I experimented with different mic positions, the ORPHEUS helped me choose the best positioning, revealing unwanted overtones in some and warmth in others. I often favour the 'recorder man' position so it captures what I'm hearing behind the kit as honestly as possible. On several occasions I've found the ORPHEUS has outperformed an AKG 414, which is no mean feat!
"They look as great as they sound too! It really is as simple as that. The classic look of the ORPHEUS never fails to impress. This is actually very useful because convincing a producer or live sound engineer to use a mic they're not familiar with when they have their preferred models is very difficult. But when they open the beautiful wooden box and see the ORPHEUS, we're halfway there!"
