Sir Needs To Mixalot

The version everyone knows goes like this. December 1970, Headley Grange, John Bonham’s brand new Ludwig kit set up at the bottom of the stairwell, and engineer Andy Johns hanging two Beyerdynamic M160s a couple of floors up. All true, but it leaves out the part Johns himself kept bringing up.

He ran the two mics through a pair of limiters (Vintage King’s write-up says they were Helios F760s in the Rolling Stones’ mobile truck) and then sent the drums through Jimmy Page’s Binson Echorec. In his MusicRadar interview he’s pretty blunt about where that lurching “ga-gack” comes from: “It was the Binson that made him sound like that.”

The song was also recorded at a different speed and slowed down afterwards, which goes a long way toward explaining why the whole track feels like it’s wading through mud. Rick Beato made a video a while back arguing the stairwell gets more credit than it deserves. His comments section did not take it well.

Why the M160? It’s a double-ribbon hypercardioid that’s been in production since 1952. The tight pattern means a pair hung high picks up the kit and the space without turning to mush, and it’s dark enough that the cymbals don’t get nasty once you start leaning on a limiter.

Trying it at home

You don’t need a stairwell. Put one mic well away from the kit (a hallway works), hit a limiter hard enough that you can hear it breathe, and print a short tape-style echo underneath. Then play slower and heavier than feels right. Johns said it himself: for the rest of it, you really need Bonzo.

Watch and read

• MusicRadar: Andy Johns on the Levee drum sound
• MusicRadar: Andy Johns on recording Led Zeppelin IV
• Vintage King: Recreating the Levee drums, with video
• Diffuser: Chad Smith and Roger Taylor play the Headley Grange stairwell
• Wikipedia: Beyerdynamic M 160

Shure brought out the SM7 in 1973 as a broadcast mic. A decade later Bruce Swedien was using one on most of Michael Jackson’s lead vocals, including “Billie Jean” and “The Way You Make Me Feel.” He told Sound On Sound the choice raised some eyebrows at the time. He owned six of them.

The part worth stealing is less about the mic and more about the habit. Swedien said he used the same mic and the same preamp for Jackson’s vocals throughout the album. Every song was sung into one chain, so the voice sounds like the same person in the same room from the first track to the last. On a self-recorded EP, that kind of consistency usually matters more than which mic you buy.

The SM7 is on plenty of other records too. Bruce Dickinson on The Number of the Beast, Anthony Kiedis on Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and Jack White’s vocals from Icky Thump on. The current model is the SM7B. Close relative, not the identical early-’80s mic.

Tracking with one

It’s a quiet mic and it needs a lot of clean gain, somewhere around 60 dB for a normal singer, which is why people pair it with a Cloudlifter or another inline booster. Sing close. It forgives a bad room better than most condensers, which is probably how podcasters found it.

Watch and read

• Sound On Sound: Bruce Swedien: Recording Michael Jackson
• MusicRadar: Swedien on the making of Thriller, track by track
• Reverb: Swedien on how he captured Jackson’s voice
• YouTube: Bruce Swedien on vocal mic placement
• Wikipedia: Shure SM7

Royer released the R-121 in 1998. Back then ribbons were mostly something you found in the closet of an older studio, and the R-121 is a big part of why they came back into everyday use, especially on electric guitar.

Engineer Ross Hogarth was one of the first to pair it with a Shure SM57 on the same speaker. The 57 brings the bite, the ribbon brings the low mids and a softer top, and you blend to taste. Hogarth described his video series on it as a way to “crack the code.” Steve Genewick used the same pair on every guitar amp on Spinal Tap II, according to Mix, and Royer’s library has Slash’s Marshall miked the same way.

Getting the two mics to agree

It’s all phase. Put both mics on the same spot on the cone, with the capsules as close to lined up as you can get them. Solo both, flip the polarity on one, and keep whichever setting sounds fuller. Then move the ribbon back half an inch at a time while you listen in mono.

Two things about ribbons. The back of the mic hears as much as the front, so whatever is behind it ends up on the track. And loud is fine, but a blast of air (a kick drum port, a bass cab with no grille) is not.

Watch and read

• Royer Labs: Ross Hogarth and Tim Pierce, Recording Electric Guitar video series
• Mix: Ross Hogarth on Royer history
• Mix: Hogarth’s guitar miking videos announced
• Sweetwater InSync: Ribbon mics on electric guitar

The 4038 started out as a BBC design in the 1950s. STC built it first, and Coles has made it since the mid ’70s with the same specs. It looks a bit like a small waffle iron and it sounds dark, wide and very natural, especially on loud things.

At Abbey Road, Norman Smith used a pair as overheads on Ringo Starr’s kit, and Geoff Emerick kept experimenting with them. Ken Scott told Sound On Sound he used one on Paul McCartney’s bass cab and on the Hammond during the Sgt. Pepper and White Album sessions. Glyn Johns’ well-known drum setup often used two of them, and they’re on Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn too.

A Glyn Johns-style setup

Excuse the drawing.

One mic three or four feet above the snare, pointing down. A second just past the floor tom, low, looking across the kit toward the snare. Use a mic cable as a tape measure to get both the same distance from the center of the snare, then add a kick mic. It’s simple and very hard to make sound bad. With 4038s you’ll want a preamp with plenty of clean gain.

Watch and read

• Abbey Road Institute: The Coles 4038 at Abbey Road
• Vintage King: Coles 4038 history
• Wikipedia: Coles 4038

The RCA 44 is the mic you picture when you picture 1940s radio. It’s a figure-8 ribbon, and when Bing Crosby leaned in close, the proximity effect gave him the warm, intimate low end that became crooning. Frank Sinatra sang into them early on. Les Paul used a 44-BX when he recorded “How High the Moon” in 1951.

RCA stopped making them a long time ago. AEA, in Pasadena, started servicing RCA ribbons in 1976, and by 1998 it could make every part of a 44 itself. That became the R44C, a replica of the 1936–38 44-BX. Les Paul told AEA’s Wes Dooley it was his favorite mic, and Eddie Van Halen bought a pair to record drums in stereo.

Singing into one

Distance is the tone control. Close in, you get the low-end bloom. Step back a foot and it thins out and the room comes in. Because it’s a figure-8, the back hears just as well as the front, so think about what’s behind it. Give it a preamp with a lot of clean gain.

Watch and read

• AEA: Our story
• AEA: The last 20 years of the R44
• Vintage King: The RCA 44