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Bill Stunt

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  • occupation
    Recording Engineer/Producer/Songwriter
  • hobbies
    Tennis and travel
  • Location
    Just outside of Ottawa, Canada

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  1. I use my oddball AKG C-5600 on toms. I recently mixed some drum tracks that had great tom sounds. Turned out they were recorded with Neat Worker Bee mics which have been discussed on this forum in the past. The sound was detailed and huge. Mind you, the drums were perfectly tuned and very well played which undoubtedly was a factor in how great they sounded but those weird Neat mics did the job of capturing them amazingly well. I use all the usual suspects on kick drums but sub in my EV 666 dynamic for an old school kick sound. Works well on quiet rootsy tunes.
  2. I haven't looked at the manual for the Adrenalinn in years. I did last night. I had completely missed that Craig was one of the authors. Adrenallinn Man.pdf
  3. For guitar cabs, I use an EV 666 dynamic mic and one of 3 different ribbon mics-the choice dependent on the tone I'm trying to capture. Either an RCA BK5 a NAD-2 RSM (modified with a Samar transformer) and, lately most often, with a Stage Right LR=100 active ribbon mic that I learned about by monitoring this forum! Thanks. It's a really great sounding mic. In my studio I have 3 tube amps. An Excelsior Americana built in the 60's by Sano, a Univox U-155R of the same era and a Traynor YA-2B Bass Mate from the early 70's. They all sound great. The Excelsior Americana is great for...well Americana tunes and for jangly tones. The Univox is like a poor man's Fender Deluxe. It has a lovely tone and a really sweet Jensen speaker. Traynor is a Canadian company. There early stuff was great...very Fender like. I use the Bass Mate for both bass and for crunchy full bodied guitar tones. I do go direct quite often when I'm tracking myself. I've use a Roger Linn designed Adrenalinn stompbox. It has very playable and believable amp sims. I love that thing to death. I've had it for years and one of the cool things about it is Roger Linn sells upgrade kits. I have an early model but its been upgraded to the latest version. The upgrade is super simple...you swap out a couple of chips on the circuit board! The kit include the tool to pry out the original chips. The new ones just get pressed into the board. No soldering. I would say the Adrenalinn has been the secret sauce on a lot of tracks I've recorded. I guess not so secret anymore.
  4. I watched a video of Bob Clearmountain talking about his mix process. The interviewer asked him how he knew a mix was done. He was standing in front of his console and he reached out to tweak something and then said. "When i don't feel like I need to do that anymore, it's done"...or words to that effect. As for old mixes, I've got folders full of alternate mixes from long finished project with annotations like -2 dB 60 Hz on kick or shorter vocal verb etc. When I listen back to them I can barely tell the difference between them. They all sound perfectly acceptable. It's easy to get lost in the weeds. I'm lucky in that as a reviewer I get to try lots of great new things. When I get something that does something cool and unique I'm always tempted to go back and use it on a mix that I thought was done. I try to resist that but I'm not always successful. I guess that's not the worst problem to have but it does tend to prolong the "it's done" moment. But I agree, something clicks and you feel like you've done all you can...at least until company X comes out with a brand new plugin that....🙂
  5. So I've been trying out the L100 for a couple of weeks and I have to say it's pretty good. Sounds great on spoken word. Very "broadcasty" sounding. The proximity effect is off the charts so you need to work it farther back than most mics. It has one really serious flaw...the body is very resonant. I'm going to line the mic body with silicon caulking to try and damp it down. Otherwise it's a very serviceable mic that will come in handy.
  6. The fact that you made the sidecar from your own tree is beyond cool. Thanks for the cable info. That length would work for my friend but so far the Smart Gain function is working well for him. His clock situation is pretty straightforward. The EVO16 is set to internal and sends to the the SP8 over BNC. He didn't set clock source properly for the SP8 which was why he initially had some issues. I sorted it out for him. Thanks again.
  7. That is a very cool sidecar...smart design. How long is the optical cable that runs back to the Appolo? I'm heading back to my drummer friends studio today. He's having an issue with the SP8 connected via ADAT. He's getting cross channel feedback somehow. I suspect it's a routing issue in his DAW. This is his first recording rig and he's just getting a handle on how to set up a DAW. In any case, I love your extremely practical solution for setting levels from the drum stool.
  8. Nice set up Dave. Is that Audient interface right beside the kit? Last weekend I helped a drummer friend set up a new recording system based on an Audient EVO 16 interface coupled with a Audient SP8 for a total of 16 channels of mic preamps...more than enough to mic up his kit. The thing that I like about this system is the Smart Gain function. Perfect for a drummer who is playing and engineering or working alone. Setting levels can be tricky depending on where your recording rig is in relation to your kit. With Smart Gain you select the channels you're using, engage Smart Gain and play. The unit listens and sets levels for each input allowing for a respectable amount of headroom. We aren't quite finished with the set up but we did do a couple of runs of level setting with Smart Gain and the initial results were pretty good.
  9. If I do decide to modify I'll post my results on Bryce's new website, funribbontidbit.com
  10. It sure looks like and has the same stated specs as an Eikon RM8. I just ordered one. It will be fun to experiment with and at this price point there won't be much risk involved with taking a look at how it could be improved with a modification.
  11. I love ribbon mics. Even inexpensive ones, as Paul points out can offer a different flavor. I have a Nady RSM-2, a relatively inexpensive Chinese manufactured ribbon mic. Acting on Matt McGlynn's advice, I swapped out the stock transformer for a Samar RT32 toroidal transformer. It turned a decent mic that I used occasionally into a really great mic that I use all the time. It's an easy modification.
  12. I have. The 5600 shares sonic DNA with a 414 but its not a dead ringer. It's not a overly bright mic. It has the nylon ring capsule. To my ears it's closet relative in the 414 range sound wise is later run versions of 414 EB. It's a quality microphone.
  13. I used AKG 202 dual capsule dynamic mics quite a lot when I worked in broadcast. Very tight card pickup which was really helpful in a lot of situations.
  14. There is an informative article in the March issue of Recording Magazine that charts the family history of the classic microphones from the AKG C series. Lots of good information and great pictures. Of particular interest to me was the rundown of the various versions of the C 414. It's a great read. Got me thinking about a somewhat enigmatic pair of AKG mics in my collection. A few years ago I saw and ad in a local buy and sell website for an AKG C 5600, a mic I had never heard of. Intrigued, I got in touch with the owner who turned out to be an accomplished and successful songwriter who was winding down his demo studio and met with him to look at the mic. Actually mics as it turned out...he had 4 of them all in near mint condition. I did some research but found precious little information or user experience online. Seems like a bit of a ghost microphone. These were the only substantial mentions I could find. https://www.vintagemicworld.com/html/Mic of the month January 2017_AKG_C5600.html http://www.coutant.org/akgc5600/ Turns out they were designed to be road-worthy versions of the 414, albeit a 414 with only a single cardioid pickup pattern. I cherry picked the two I thought looked and performed the best and negotiated a very reasonable price. They aren't the quietest mics but they have very low sensitivity, very high max SPL and 2 HPF settings which is useful when setup on the grill of a amp cab. That's where I mostly use them but they are also great on drums. I like them on the toms. I haven't tried them on horns yet but I suspect they'll be great. I'm curious to hear from anyone who has come across this mic. I'd love to hear your experience.
  15. My process is similar to Paul's. I use a DI and an amp and phase align and sum the two signals in my DAW. I tend to compress with an Opto compressor on the way in but very gently. I also try to stay away from too much EQ. I use a Neve 1073 channel strip plugin for the bass when mixing and find that EQ is perfect for adding a bit of presence or making room for the kick. Very occasionally I'll use a Pultec EQP-1A plugin to fatten an anemic bass track but I prefer not to have to do that. I have a great sounding bass amp in my studio, which works well most of the time, but I will use an Ampeg SVT plugin for certain tracks. I fell in love with that amp the first time I used one live on stage. It was a visceral experience. Slightly off topic...I had the opportunity to record English bassist Jah Wobble at a festival in Toronto. The mobile I was using was parked behind the venue close to the stage door. As I recall, Jah Wobble played through 5 Ampeg VSTs. It was loud! Even outside in the mobile the resonant bass from the stage was louder than what was coming from the monitors in the mobile.
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