AKG D125

So.. what i was actually looking for was an AKG D19, which is known widely as one of The Beatles secret weapons. (For those that don't know, i'm a bit of a Beatles tragic. It's ok.. i've learned to live with it.) But these mics go for ridiculous crazy prices on Ebay and elsewhere, basically because nerds like me are trying to be Ringo. And i wasn't going to pay $500 for an old used dynamic mic, regardless of how good the drums in "Hello Goodbye" sound...

However, in my research, folks were mentioning the AKG D125 as one its successors, displaying similar characteristic. So i found a few of these REALLY cheap on eVilbay, and took a chance. I figured "how bad could they be?" I think i paid $200 including shipping from Germany for a pair of them.

The day they arrived i was recording a particularly "Revolver"-esque track for one of my side projects The Supahip. They went straight onto the drum kit, as a single overhead and on the snare bottom. Now, i'm not sure what i was expecting, perhaps magic, but they initially threw me. They sounded a lot like the dynamic mic they are.. quite flat... not overly detailed in the top end. But with a real brassiness to the mid range.. a bit below the honky frequency. They were really quite full, which surprised me a little, though a long way from hi-fi. I had to eq in a fair amount of top end, but between these 2 mics and a D112 on the kit, i was really happy with the result. The track was called "Satellite". I think we also used it on pretty much everything else. I have a vague recollection that we even used it on the lead vocal (though for the video we used a Rode Classic 2.. it looked sexier.)

Now, you'll often hear me go on about crusty mics, and how they can be as important as the expensive ones we all lust after. This mic has been one that i often use just to hear what it'll do. I used it on a lead vocal the other day with a delicate female singer, and it was perfect for a flatter, more one dimensional tone that sat in the track beautifully, and took reverb well. I often use it on guitar amps instead of an SM57, with another higher quality mic next to it, and blending it really brings out a unique and special mid range thing. It's not exactly a 'truth in advertising' mic, but it sounds very cool and crusty.

As you can see from the picture, it sits on a little desk stand pointing at the corner of a window? What? Well.. it's permanently on the window in my tracking room, plugged into a crusty old Shure mixer with a nutso compressor on it (more on that in another blog), permanntly plugged into the patch bay. And i regularly will just bring this mic up to hear what it's doing, as i see the VU popping away on the Shure mixer. It gets used a lot, just to screw up the primary source sound a little. Very cool indeed.

Remember.. cheap crusty mics are VERY cool.