"I'm lucky enough to count a few of the engineers at Abbey Road Studios as friends, and over dinner one night one of them was raving about these Sontronics mics which he'd been using at the studios.
I'd just moved into a new writing studio and was looking to improve my mic collection so the timing was perfect. "Whilst we all know it's the sound that really matters, I'd be lying if I didn't say that my first reaction was a smile about how great the mics looked. I think the SATURN was the first Sontronics mic I saw in action, and the slightly retro styling is fantastic... it's one that visitors to the studio always ask about and head towards.
Sound wise, I was impressed by the high-end quality. Across the board Sontronics' mics have a balance and clarity that I'd previously heard only in vintage and often extortionately priced mics. "Much of what I record in my own studio is solo instruments and voices. I have a slightly compulsive collecting habit for string instruments of all varieties, so it's been a lot of fun trying various mics with each instrument and experimenting, depending on what sound I'm attempting to achieve.
Again, with voices, each of the different mics has proved its worth at some point. On The World's End, when I needed to make the sound of a strange, hellish choir, I ended up huddled around the SATURN with my children, us all wailing away. Overdubbed and processed in peculiar ways, it made a great sound and made it into the film, much to the children's amusement.
"When I record instruments in my own place, I'm largely looking to accomplish one of two things, either the best sound I can achieve for an exposed solo instrument, or, more often, a clean well balanced signal that I can play with in myriad ways.
Something I love is to take a sound and transform it to make something unique, something that belongs to and complements the unique mood of a particular film. Even though I'm no engineer, it's been very easy to get sounds that work for me using my Sontronics mics. Rather than spending ages 'saving' sounds with EQ and compression after the event, I'm finding I'm getting good results quickly that suit my needs and let me stay in a creative mode rather than becoming distracted by technical fiddling.
"Apart from the orchestra that we recorded at Air Studios, everything else from my score for Edgar Wright's The World's End was recorded here in my studio, the majority of it using my Sontronics mics. There are lots of guitars and percussive overdubs, along with manipulations of sounds which have their origins in anything from mobile phone interference to the tape drive from an old computer.
"A huge amount was recorded with the SATURN as it seems to just work wherever I put it. I was particularly pleased with the vocal sound we got when recording two choristers from Winchester Cathedral. A combination of the SIGMA and OMEGA seemed to provide just the right balance of clarity and warmth. The mics were also used extensively for my score for the film Gravity.
"Sontronics is a rather impressive company... everything I've seen from them, from the products themselves to the way they're packaged, to the direct and friendly support offered by Trevor and Lisa, has been fantastic. It's very easy to recommend Sontronics. I'm looking forward to trying whatever products they come up with next!
"The SATURN sits right next to me at my writing desk, permanently plugged in and ready to go to capture any ideas I may want to try when I grab an instrument. That way I know that whatever I record is going to be in good shape. Or at least that the recording will sound good, even if some of my playing doesn't!"
