Well, your mic pres, effects and monitors are in good shape there.

How are your acoustics?

If they're on par with the rest of the stuff, it's time to talk microphones.

What do you record?

A couple good, general purpose mics that are worth owning:
AEA R84
Royer 121 (either or both is fine)
AKG 414
Blue Bluebird (to contrast the darker u195)
u87

Do you do voice overs?
Perhaps an EV RE 20
maybe a TLM49

Definitely a 421 or two.

Cheers and have fun spending the dough!

Well.. Originally I was thinking on the Theremionic Culture earlybird 2.2. a twin channel valvepreamp. But at over 4000 I was thinking maybe I should get something else instead. At that price I can get maybe a Chandler TG2 and still have money to buy a great mic. (maybe a Bock 151)

I allready have a royer 121, and my acoustics are decent.

hmm... Maybe a shure SM7 as well?....

I usually record pop/rock.

Any ideas?

Have you checked out the T-Culture Rooster. It's more of a novelty thing I think but it's pretty cool. About half the price of the Earlybird. Anyway, consider me a bystander. There's certainly better opinions out there.

You 'need' nothing.....you WANT a ViPre.

Yes, yes you do. And a Distressor.

The ViPre will triple your mic collection.

And as a beginning of the golden chain for a vocal....its very...errr.....wow.

Twood wrote: 2 x Green River ME 1NV

:D
I have a 1NV
but it's not green

I know he meant Great River
:P

you do have some nice stuff there

Dave says " .....you WANT a ViPre. "
8)
I'm going to have to get my hands on one of these to see what all the fuss is about

You 'need' nothing.....you WANT a ViPre.

Yes, yes you do. And a Distressor.

LOL... I`m getting sleeeepy....

I have a 1NV
but it's not green

Hehe... Come to think about it, neither is mine...

But on a serious note, some nice preamps would be good. I got a 4 channel TL Audio valve preamp that I`m thinking of selling. I was the first preamp i bought when I first started recording and i guessed it has served me well. The sound is "decent" (at best) but the lack of headroom is a problem.

If I was adding to that collection...The U87...mics before pres...after that...not enough left for the Vipre...maybe the distressor

On a less fantasy driven note - do you do a lot of recording with stereo pairs? How about a pair of 414s + stereo bar and stand? Or another pair of multipattern LDCs more to taste.

Finally, while its not very sexy. I could certainly spend a lot of cash throwing away every crappy stand, mic clip, cable, piece of furniture, etc. in the studio and replacing them with top quality stuff. (And of course $4-5K would get one fairly nice oriental carpet.) Wouldn't improve the quality of my recordings, but it would improve the quality of my life.

there is part of me that agrees with Bob
...
the U87

as much as the newer and cheaper mics are so very good for the money
it would be nice to have one or two of the old industry standards

the reviews used to go " ... nearly as good as a U87 "

one day I hope to get the real thing ... I already have the 414s

perhaps just replace the TL Audio 5001 with a classier two chanel Tubed Pre

the Distressor is nice and worth having
but
perhaps an LA2 to go with the 1176 you already have
these are the two units most people are buying when they get the Distressor
... yes I know it does more than just that

how about a classy monitor controller

You know what... The more I keep searching for stuf, the more I realise that it is the Earlybird I want. I just can`t get it out of my mind.

I need a decent mic as well. Something to top my soundelux U195. (witch I`m, by the way, very satisfied with)

I never heard the T3 mic but I wouldn't want the u195 being my only good condenser. With the gear you have now I would definitely invest in a good tube mic of equal caliber.

So you guys think its time to buy a new mic?...

Hmm... well.. I can strech it to around 3000, maybe 3500. So is the U87 the natural choice? I`ve always been a bit skeptic about Neumann. It seems like you pay a lot just to get the Neumann name..

Am I way off here?

Will the U87 be a huge improvement compared to the U195?

I have experience with both.

AND I agree on your point about the Neumann name.

Do they sound better than your average $2K+ mic......Yes, most of the time.

Are there mics in this price range that will deliver the tracks as well as the Neumann?....... Yes, and of course it depends on WHAT you want to hear in the recording.

I LOVED that thick full-bodied sound I heard with the U195. I LOVE that mic.

I prefer my U87 in every respect. On every source.

There is a sheen, a something-or-other that is so hard to explain, that you get with the Neumann. Is it the fabled "air"??? uh....maybe.....

Its like this. Everything in the sound spectrum that it picks up is clear. There simply arent any grey areas.

I think the new ones are overpriced and have said that on many different occasions.

They do sell themselves as far as time booked. Everyone wants to record on one and the vocalists pine for them while most have never used one for anything. The mystique is that big.

So is the sound. One thing a U87 does better than any other mic (excepting U47's, the Manley references, Brauners and a couple others) is react favorably to the the mic pre in the way that most of them were designed. Its the one mic that even sounds better on a cheap pre than anything should.

Then you get into true variable input impedance and thats a whole nother set of rules and sounds.

A U87 and a ViPre is just about as perfect as it gets.

This happens everytime I`m buying gear. My budget gets waaay bigger then i planned. A earlibird and a u87 will set me back about 7000usd.. That`s gonna leave a mark in my valet.

Well, you do pay a price for the Neumann name, but if you are trying to attract clients the name is useful to you. It's hard to think of something more confidence boosting than putting a U87 in front of a vocalist and saying "let's try this first." And it's not as if the U87 is a recent fad. If you were just buying this for one vocalist, you could probably find a better fit for a better price. But it just seems like a pretty standard piece of equipment for a professional studio tracking any popular music genre.

Pre's are never a bad thing to have, but great mic's are an investment.

I'll nominate the Peluso P47... a pair even! A GREAT mic that IS a good as the original.

Possibly the Peluso P12?!?

Haven't seen the ViPre, so I can't say anything about it. However, Averill's 1073 or 312 might be a nice alternative.

Anybody who has any experience with the Brauner Valvet? And the Valvet compared to the U87?

I forgot to mention that I really appreciate all of your advise and suggestions..

Thank you.. keep it coming..

Ok... so here comes an update. I pretty much went completely crazy and bought waay more then planned. (..and waay more then I can really afford..)

Here is the list over my new gear:

Telefunken ELA M 251F
AKG D112
Shure Beta52
2 X DPA 4011
Theremionic Culture Earlybird 2.2
Chandler TG2
Realtraps roomkit (8 minitraps + 3 microtraps)
Realtraps portable vocal booth
2 x Atlas stand (the BIG ones 4,5 meters high)
beyerdynamic 770pro headphones

puh...

Nice!!!
Now go out and buy a Porche and put yourself into REAL debt.

I find it really helps to know someone who owns a boat. (Doesn't even have to be a very big boat.) Makes you feel frugal by comparison.

Nice list though. Have fun!

BobRogers wrote: I find it really helps to know someone who owns a boat. (Doesn't even have to be a very big boat.) Makes you feel frugal by comparison.

Nice list though. Have fun!

If it flies, floats or f***s, rent it.

Went crazy? That's probably 6 months income for me....gross. lol. I may be exaggerating but only by a little. How sad. How terribly, terribly sad. *goes off to contemplate a second job...at Mc D's.*

Went crazy? That's probably 6 months income for me....gross. lol. I may be exaggerating but only by a little. How sad. How terribly, terribly sad. *goes off to contemplate a second job...at Mc D's.*

Dont feel bad.. This is six months income for me as well...

I did some takes with the DPAs on acoustic guitar the other day. Amazing. I had a hard time deceiding wich sdc to get. I really liked the DPAs. The only thing I was afraid of was that they might be a bit too "clean"... I almost went with some Schoeps instead. Its really hard to deceide sometimes. But now that I`ve had the DPAs for a few days a really tried them out; no problem. Pushing the input a bit on the earlybird solves the whole "too clean"problem.