Music, mainly, with some boating and audio stuff. I play fiddle, mandolin, guitar and tenor banjo, and Jeffries duet concertina and melodeon, and sing and play on my own and with my wife Julie, and with our ceilidh band The Tonic.
I also upload tutorial videos about playing English country dance tunes, which are designed to support the tunes playing workshops and sessions I run locally.
Tony reminds me of Yogi Berra who is reported to have said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." He follows the musical path like few others.😊
Thank you for this side by side comparison. I'm studying a bit of microphone circuitry, and I could hear the differences really clearly with your demonstration. Validated all I've read about these mics. Think I'll collect all these 3 myself too. 1.The sc400 has an straight forward FET solid state circuitry, without an transformer. Resulting in an straightforward signal, uncolored and transient. But due to the cheaper quality diaphragm-capsule used in this, the frequency response has an peaky behavior towards the 8-10khz, which did became noticeable with pronouncing Ess's & T's. But overall it was very forward & direct sounding. (Tell you a secret: The SC400 has an High pass filter switch, able to rolling off the low end @100hz -6dB/oct. but it's not accessible from the outside chassis. The button/switch is on the circuit board. If you open mic up, you can see an blue switch, if you switch that on, it can filter out anything below 100hz & clear the low-end bass rumble or handling noise of the mic ;-)] 2. the sc450 has a different cleaner circuitry that has an high frequency modifier embedded. Even with the same type peaky diaphragm/capsule, those peaks are bit more tamed/broadened between 7khz & 12khz. Resulting in an broad affected area rather than single point, still noticeable on ess's & T's. Due to the transformer on the output, which adds 2nd harmonics, and light compression of the signal. It's noticeable that the transients reduced in level, and the soft background raised in level, resulting in an more overall level during your speech with this one, compared to sc400, where it was more dynamic between loud & quiet parts of speaking. 3. The sc 1100 has an different circuitry with different polar patterns. And again with an transformer at the end. The capsule this time is different & larger, 35mm compared to the 32mm of those before. And also both the front & back of capsule are active, when setting to omni or eight figure pattern. The spaciousness was obviousness & and the boosted high end trebles. Indeed with the transformer it can introduce some harshness with plosives & sibilance, "Puffed stifly" "bound fast & thought". Requiring more clearance/distance from mic, perhaps angling/direction of mic so that plosives are not direct towards diaphragm/capsule. The advantage of sc400, is being straight forward unaltered signal & sharp dynamics of loud & soft, yet being cautious of those peaky freq. Advantage of sc450, cleaner signal path similar to far more expensive mic models, slightly compressed & 2nd harmonic distortion, thicker/louder leveled sound, tho broad ramp of high freq to beware of. Same advantages apply to sc1100 too, adding spaciousness, increased capsule surface area & multi-pattern circuits, but harsher at some points too. Cheers.
@@paulbarker5179 It sounds like your Tom and mine are different people. These two are the ones I knew and know - Barbara is still with us, thankfully. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gr0eKiVUBVc.htmlsi=uNW9ginekzLCSHVV
@@Realtalkyou08 I think the 40 is wider and needs a treated room more, but is more natural. It doesn't seem to need the eq at 550Hz that the 33 requires. I also think the 40 can benefit from a bit of warming up somewhere in the 150kHz sort of range, however. I need to use it again to figure that out properly.
@@GavinAtkin okay, I have the 4033a but my room is terrible so I can get the best out of the mic. My next place I plan to treat the room and even buy a quieter laptop as well.
Hey!!!!! I have a 600D cardioid condenser one, can’t find any type of serial # on it but it looks just like urs except all black!! Since you have so much experience, I have 2 questions! A: how many volts of phantom power does it need? B: what battery does it take and how to you open it up? Thx so so much I can’t find anything about it online!!
@@cellowrapsupreme6962 I don't know anything about a 600D, but I think AT mics have sometimes been sold under other brand names. 48V phantom is the standard; I haven't experienced an AT mic not working because the phantom power was insufficient, but I guess it could happen. I haven't ever put a battery in one of my AT pencil condensers (I imagine they work less well with 1.5V than with 48V phantom), but there's a cross head screw near the bottom that I think provides access to the battery compartment.
Hi, which microphone would be best for male hip hop/rap vocals? , mki or mkvi? , mki is vintage u87 and mkvi is brighter u87 according to the seller's description
@@jagg_Z I'm sorry. I know nothing of hip hop. The MkIV is said to be more AKGish, and I tend to find it the most useful all round, usually on voice 2. I'd say the MkI in voicing 1 can be quite bright, so I imagine the VI is bright beyond anything I'd ever want.
It felt very nice and easy under the fingers, but I needed something brighter and stronger, so bought a second hand Yamaha LS16, pre ARE. I'm amazed by that guitar...
This is from The Fiddler's Companion: “Steamboat Hornpipe” was in the repertoire of the 19th century Tyneside, Northumberland, fiddler and composer James Hill (c. 1815-c. 1860), to whom it is sometimes attributed, although this has not been ascertained. Hill was Scottish-born, but lived most of his life in Gateshead, Northumberland, and was known as the ‘Paganini of the hornpipe’ for his famous hornpipe compositions. Not much is known about him, although he appears to have been a popular tavern fiddler, sometime publican, and sports enthusiast. The first half of the tune is employed in an untitled hornpipe in the Ellis Knowles manuscript, c. 1847, from Radcliffe, Lancashire, England (printed in the Plain Brown Tune Book, pg. 42). Similarly, the first part of the tune appears in the 1831 music manuscript of George Spencer (Leeds, England) {see abc’s below}. Hill’s heyday was in the 1840’s to early 1850’s, and it may be that the first part of the melody was in circulation prior to his “improvements” (Hill was also apparently not one to discourage attributions of popular melodies to himself).
I once made a short cassette album with Florida that we titled 'Sex, Death and Hornpipes'. We were young and perhaps these subjects all seemed very important to us!
I'm recording bluegrass fiddle today and will try this. Last session even in my treated studio the recording came out with too much room noise. Ill try and write back with the results
Please do. I think this method probably fixes biting trebly bow and string noises rather than room sound, but it's surely worth a try. Please tell us how it goes.
A wonderful performance. Thank you for keeping our songs alive. I'm of a younger generation than you, but now I've got my own young children, I want to make sure they're more aware of our heritage than I was when I was growing up.
You're very kind - and right about your children's heritage. It's shocking that children in this country grow to adulthood without knowing much about their country and it's interesting, strange and sometimes exotic cultural stuff, beyond what the Establishment thinks is strictly necessary and respectable. The Establishment has such tunnel vision!
These videos are going to be immensely helpful in my new Button Melodeon adventure! I just fully realized the enormous amount of videos that you guys have uploaded over the years. Thanks much!!!!! 🙂🙂🙂😎😎😎
I think mic choice has to be based on the voice, the nature of the room you're working in (and what you're able to do to improve it) and the effect you're trying to achieve. The MkII has a pleasant, smooth quality on my slightly nasal baritone, but I find I have to dial out some lower mids soupiness that's probably proximity effect and due to its hypercardiod pickup pattern. In this video, I didn't cut those lower mids quite enough, I think... I'm always experimenting, so I use different mics all the time. Even in voicing 2 the MkIV isn't nearly so flattering and likely nearer the truth! But it's probably a good starting point for many voices particularly in higher ranges. So you might say I'd choose the MkII for medium range mail voices, and the MkIV for a tenor or higher. My favourite home recording mic currently is the AT AE5040, btw; it doesn't look much, but it's smooth, takes EQ well and does a better than average job of rejecting unwanted sounds.
@@EugenBabasch Good luck. Btw, I've recently found the plugin Smooth Operator can be useful with the quality of mics I own: it can be used on its own to control unwanted peakiness, but it can also help to identify where those peaks are. This gives you a choice to either rely on the SO plugin itself, or to apply cuts in those areas using EQ before the signal reaches SO, which you can then use more gently... My take is that SO's compression is best used gently, so I often usethe EQ route
@@GavinAtkin Great advice, thank you. I have this plugin by the way and use it quite often. The only microphones I have at the moment are the Oktava 119 and Oktava 012, I use them for voice and guitar recording.
@@EugenBabasch You'll know about the influence of rooms, mic position and pickup pattern tightness, then... If you plump for a Warbler, do try each of the three voices. I have several, and always think voicing 2 is the most appealing. Is the MK119 as wide as my MK219s?
RVW collected the song from David Penfold in the Plough in Rusper - still standing in all it's oak beamed splendour. (Signs in the pub warn you to mind your head when stepping up to the bar, and they have padded the offending beam to make it less of a blow when you forget! I speak from experience). The recording of David Penfold singing the song can be found in the Collections section of the British Library's website.
@@GavinAtkin No. Haven't seen them. Sadly at 5he moment the Sound archive at the BL seems to be offline thanks to their problems with a hacker some months ago.
