Gear Reviews

JZ Microphones is a new Latvian company started by mic designer Juris Zarins, who at one time worked closely with the company BLUE. JZ's promotional literature touts its old world, no-compromise manufacturing methods, and it's easy to see why. The Black Hole is meticulously crafted, with...

Most of us at one time or another have owned or thought about buying an ART product. In my opinion, they offer one of the best price-versus-performance product lines on the market. At the January NAMM show, ART introduced their new M-Series line of microphones, including three FET large-diaphragm...

Since November, I've been working on a huge shootout of small-diaphragm condenser mics; I might have mentioned this in my last review. Frankly, I might mention this in every review forever, since it appears the SDC test will never end. Frankly, there's a part of me that wants to keep it...

FutzBox is a brand-new distortion and noise generator plug-in for mashing, destroying, and making low-fidelity versions of your tracks. The main interface offers configurable "futz" effects, including filters, EQ, distortion, noise generation, and gating. Along with these tools, McDSP has...

Switching between in-the-box mixing, external summing, and console mixing has been a project-by-project reality in my personal world for a long time now. There are merits to all of these different approaches; my personal preference is to mix on a console, but it's not always an option....

Recently, I have come across many references to the balance of art and science in the creation and production of music. The most inspiring and insightful Tape Op interviews in the last few issues have some of the most well-regarded studio engineers insisting that only a small percentage of their...

If you work in a purpose-built, acoustically-treated studio in which room anomalies are at a minimum, then the acclaimed Focal SM6 series of monitors (Tape Op #60, #61) is a first-class choice. However, if you work in a tiny bedroom, a vast loft, a low-slung basement, an oddly-shaped attic, an...

The C720 Anniversary Special commemorates Josephson's twenty years in business. Like many other large-diaphragm condenser mics employing a two-sided capsule, the C720 has multiple, user-selectable pickup patterns, including cardioid, hypercardioid, subcardioid, omni, and figure-8. But...

I recently sold my beloved solid-state Pultec EQP-1A3 equalizers, so I was in the market for a new unit to fill the empty void left in my mastering rig. Unlike my old Pultec program equalizers, this time I wanted something with more surgical precision to it. If at all possible, I wanted something...

Since November, I've been working on a huge shootout of small-diaphragm condenser mics; I might have mentioned this in my last review. Frankly, I might mention this in every review forever, since it appears the SDC test will never end. Frankly, there's a part of me that wants to keep it...

We have a Daking console here at The Hangar and a pair of his FET compressors that see near constant use, so when Geoff Daking and Brad Lunde at TransAudio Group offered to send us a pair of Mic Pre One preamps to try out, we jumped at the opportunity to use and hear them. We were in the middle of...