Has retro gone retro, all over again? I remember my first mixing gig like it was yesterday (it almost was……). I was the ripe old age of 12 and my dad sang lead in a gospel quartet. The quartet he was in (The “Broadcasters”) had just purchased a Shure Vocal Master VA 300 system; complete with (2) six foot tall column speakers (VA 300-S) that felt like a coffin when you carried them. The main mixer/amplifier (VA 300-C) was referred to as a console and sported 6 inputs (all ¼ inch jacks). The mixer had volume, treble, and bass knobs for each channel and a handy reverb in/out rocker switch.
The reverb section of the VA 300C was spectacular! Well that is if you like noisy spring reverb. Think of the big Mr. Microphone that you can purchase at the dollar store that you can yell (or sing if you are more talented than me) into and hear the spring reverb sort of reproduce an effect that might be intelligible enough to pick out the word you yelled(or maybe in your case, sang) into it. One of the unpublished and in my case most disturbing effects that the reverb section on the VA 300-C could create was the spring reverb twaaaaaang that would loudly play over the speakers when you bumped the console to hard.
Well you can most likely guess where this is going… Shure (pun intended) enough one Sunday night sitting at the VA 300-C at a church where the Broadcasters had preformed special music, I fell asleep. It must have been the hot summer air, or maybe the fact that I was not listening to the sermon and daydreaming. Whatever the reason I started to dose off. At some point while I was dozing my head flopped forward. When my head flopped forward it startled me and I snapped back to reality. During this process (I must have felt like I was falling forward) I extended my arms out in front me. Yup, right in front of me was the VA 300-C console with that spectacular reverb…. Now special effect…… section. You guessed it a loud “twaaaaaaang” reverberated throughout the church. I don’t remember the preacher’s reaction, but I remember that I wanted to crawl under the pew and hide.
So what does this story have to do with going retro? Well, mostly nothing (it is just a fun story to tell) but it is a good set-up to a recent experience that I had.
The Shure Vocal Master System that my dad’s quartet purchased came with (6) shinny Shure Unidyne 545 microphones. Remember at this time I was the ripe age of 12 when I first mixed on the Vocal Master System. Some 30+ years later ( a few months ago) as I was working on the e3 ministry summit www.e3summit.com the 30 year old worship leader for the event shows up and proclaims that he brought his own mic for vocals. My reaction was a bit skeptical as I knew he was most likely not going to pull out a Neumann U-87 studio mic. In fact I figured what he had was not going to be better than the AKG studio mic we had on hand for the event.
To my great (shall I say ginormous) surprise he pulled out a Unidyne 545, it was not a reproduction but an actual full-fledged 30+ year old mic. I think that he saw (maybe heard what I said under my breath) my skepticism as he immediately began telling me how he absolutely loved the mic. At first I thought he was just yanking my chain, but as he continued talking about it I realized that he was serious!!!! The thought “hey, dude did you know that the mic is older that you are?” flashed through my head as my brain struggled to make sense out of the situation. In one of my better moves I said, “Okay, let’s give it a try” all the time thinking that the Unidyne would not be on stage long. Unfortunately, around this time I was pulled out of the room to help with some other responsibilities that I had for the Summit. I did not return to the room until just before the opening worship time started. As the band played through the first few songs I found myself enjoying the time of worship, caught up in the moment. Around the third song I walked back to the mix position to let the front of house engineer he was doing a great job. It was at this time I noticed that AKG mic sitting next to the mix console. I immediately turned and surveyed the stage and shure (I can’t refuse the pun) enough the worship leader was pouring his heart and vocals into the Unidyne……..
Wow, you know what it sounded good, no it sounded really good. The worship leader had told me earlier that he likes to use a Shure SM-57 for his vocal mic and as I thought about it the Unidyne was the predecessor to the 57…. Pondering further, I remember seeing Sting, Bono, Tom Petty, and Bruce Springsteen use a SM57 for vocals. In fact, when I was the front of house sound engineer for an event that a sitting President spoke at, the White House crew placed two SM-57’s on the presidential podium for me to use (one was just for backup). The fact that is sounded good started to make a little bit of sense.
Would I recommend that everyone use a Unidyne as their lead vocal mic? Of, course not! Just like I would not recommend that everyone use the exact same mic of any manufacturer on anything, particularly vocals as the tonality of the human voice can very radically from person to person.
The lesson(s)
1. Know what you like and why you like it, but do not become so biased that you are completely close minded.
2. Be willing to experiment (when you have time, not during a performance!) with different mics.
3. Listen to others and learn from their experience.
4. Let your ears be the judge.
5. Good sound is good sound; learn to recognize it by listening to good sound recordings and performances. There are a lot of great recordings where the vocals where captured using a SM-57 or a Unidyne.
For the record I shared these lessons in hope that it would help me to remember to abide by them.
I need to give props to my young worship leader friend Matt for enlightening me on the beauty of the Unidyne microphone. Especially since the mic is older than him!
