Gear Reviews

My mom thinks of me as a gadget-kinda guy - probably because she's seen my living room. It's full of recording gear, plus I have a second room full of all sorts of computer gear. To her, it all looks the same... rooms full of electronic gadgets. When Christmas comes around, she likes to shop...

Steve Albini's review of the Royer R-121 in a previous issue of Tape Op is what prompted me to try out the R- 121. A quick demo confirmed that the R-121 was a fantastic mic, so I ordered both an R-121 and a SF-12. The SF-12 is a stereo ribbon mic, with the ribbons facing 90 degrees apart, set up...

I can't recall a time when good-sounding mics have been so readily affordable as they are now. I purchased three Oktava MC012 condenser mics for less than it would have cost me to buy three SM-57s. The biggest music retailer in the US regularly advertises this mic for $99, but if you're friendly...

Firstly I want to recommend that every recording school or university with a recording program immediately purchase an STT-1. Nowhere else can you get so many different signal paths and sounds in one box. The STT-1 is like some kind of educational audio science fair project on steroids. First let's...

The McHugh Military AMM-68 is a tube-powered small condenser microphone designed around the AKG C-60. That is where the similarities end. I use the term "around" as the microphone's design is nothing short of genius in its simplicity. The whole thing comes in an army surplus ammo box...

My dad used to have two sayings that he liked to use. One, use the right tool for the job and two, put it back where you found it when your done. The right tool for me these days is the z-Systems z-Q2 stereo digital mastering equalizer. It's the EQ I reach for and use the most. Why, you might ask?...

New high-end studio reverbs tend to sell for over $1000, and $10 Pioneer models produce a lot of noise. Orban's mid-80s rack-mount unit presents a reasonable compromise. With 2 channels selling for about $300 (used, obviously), it has relatively low noise, balanced outputs, and a characteristic...

Recently Drawmer introduced a new version of its 1960, the venerable and mid-priced ($2750) stereo mic pre/DI/compressor. This version is called the 1969, and all of its modifications are courtesy of Fletcher and the guys at Mercenary Audio. I've been tracking with this device for a while now,...

To be honest, I'm not one for getting excited about pitch correction. It always seemed that it put some kind of "robotic-ness" to the voice. However, when I saw that Oberheim had licensed the Antares Auto-tune engine, and had begun marketing it under the name OB-Tune, I downloaded it...

For anyone who purchased their home studio by max-ing out their Visa card, a set of outboard audio meters probably isn't high on your list of priorities. Most modern gear includes at least decent metering, and many digital boxes go so far as to offer a choice of average or peak metering by simply...

At least once a year, a studio will usually make an investment in a piece of gear which is supposed to make their recordings jump light-years in quality. This typically comes with a high price tag, which is why a small studio doesn't do this often. The Pendulum Audio MDP-1 ($2495) is one of these...

I still cringe when I think about the first digital mixer I ever used: The Yamaha DMP-7. It was noisy, it sounded gritty, and its user-interface was horrible. But the DMP-7 had scene recall, moving faders, and it was fully automatable when connected to a MIDI sequencer - features unheard of at its price...

FATSO is an acronym for Full Analog Tape Simulator and Optimizer. When digital multitracking first became affordable, it took only one session using 16 tracks of ADAT to convince me that I didn't want a digital multitrack in my own studio. Last year, I found myself returning to the world of digital...

All right, this thing is really cool. Sadly, it's also very expensive and is an extreme example of a "one trick pony." But what a trick, man! The Seek Wah sends your signal through a series of envelope filters. There are eight tiny pots so you can control the sensitivity of each filter....

Last year saw the introduction of several competing 24 channel, 24 bit stand alone hard drive recorders from Tascam, iZ Technology (Radar), Alesis and Mackie. As all of these units sound good and perform a similar range of functions, it's difficult to choose between them. The first question you...

Many of us don't have the means to afford a rack full of processors to do all the things we need to do as practitioners of our field. So instead, we end up making compromises, oftentimes buying gear that is capable of performing more than one task, but not necessarily with the fidelity or control...

I gotta say I LOVE Bob Moog's MF102. I got one when they were first released and I have used it on something on every project since. I've had the best luck using it as a mix effect on shakers, hi-hat, piano and on the repeats of an echo. Set at the lower frequencies, it does an amazing tremolo...

I've had this in my studio for a few months now but didn't have much chance to use it until recently. To be honest, one of the reasons I didn't use it much is because I have several other mic pres/compressors that cost quite a bit more than this one and that sound really great. But once...

In 1993 Lexicon came out with a couple of effects processors, the JamMan and the Vortex, that seemed to be here one moment and gone the next. The former is an incredible looping delay, possibly one of the first of its kind, and the latter was a stereo "audio morphing" effects processor. I...