Atom Greenspan / Mic Locker Tour / Idles,Bloc Party,Nick Cave, Arcade Fire

2 a.m. 4 a.m. blasting B on a blue cassette blasting band on a blue cassette 2 a.m. 4 a.m. 2 a.m. 4 a.m. Su Rox Rox [Applause] [Music] music blasting bands on theas hey everyone welcome to Manny's mic Locker uh we are in glasel park and we are with Adam atam Greenspan but it's like Adam like the Adam as opposed to Adam and the Ants correct that is right all right well we we go way back i' I've known uh Adam for a bit and we actually did do a Manny's mic Locker a few months back and we may do a little retro segment on some of the microphones but I really wanted to come back to talk to Adam about what he's been working on currently he's uh come off working with Idols uh block party you know a plethora of band you can even go back I mean really far he was did a lot of Records working with Nick Len if you don't know who Nick is look him up birthday party in excess and I know we've talked about some of his early days were working with like Rage Against the Machine and stuff like that so I'm going to leave a link for Adam in here and just remember that you can always check out the link if you want to see some where he's from and what fans he's done but we're here about Mike's so we're going to talk about Mike's we are at his own studio is there name for this studio slam dance Cosmopolis oh my god well there you go you know where that comes from no uh it's a a clash song called ghetto defendant it's got a um a spoken word vocal by Alan Ginsburg oh well on it and it's one of the it's one of the lyrics I love that see I mean you know it's deep Adam's a deep guy okay so we're going to talk about some Mike's here and I'm going to let him lead the way what are we going to talk about first what he got what do we want to talk about M Locker yeah all right well let's see right on top I've got oh really quick let see that box yeah so if there's a question can you see it there it is Adam all right what do we got you know what's awesome about the green tape I can spot a piece of my gear from across the room at another studio and don't leave crap behind no no taking right there right all right this is an original Factory pink bi dnamic uh M500 this is a beauty no idea why they made it in pink they're normally black it's like a champagne color right yeah it's like rose gold um just used this as my main vocal mic all over the blinders album um which is out now this during the course of that record something rily started happening uh still works fine but um knowing that you uh tend to work Magic on ribbon mics I'm actually going to let you take that with you when you go today see what's going on with it I'll already make a prediction there's like a little plastic hat that's glued to a screen it's taped around it my feelings are somehow uh it has just come undone and it's and glue gets old and yeah yeah you know so but that's that's going to survive it'll come back another day right cool awesome I look forward to that's a 500 correct M500 yeah um this was purchased from um really really great uh dealer in Bordeaux France um who's got a shop called infernal machine great great stagram I think I follow um yeah he's also like a photographer he takes like super glamour shots of everything he's selling like is that the one where you have your mic which is around some muffins or something like that or Donuts well that's that's my picture but yeah he s every time you order from him he sends I forget what they're called but it's some like really delicious pastry that's like the Bordeaux and you always get a box of those like with with every order from him so I love like everything he sells is absolutely perfect and you get little pastries everything overnighted so I've attempted to take glamour shots of some of my mics like to try and compete with his it's it's it's truly gear porn his photos like they're they're really good but anyway uh shout out to Matteo what's up Matteo and and Bordeaux infernal machine um I've bought a number of of things from him um great great great ear and just really great at at sourcing those things and also you know if you're looking for like a melodium 42b he's in France so he's got those like all the time those are big boy ribbons it's like the French version of the RCA 44 they're like and it's a recreation they they copied it down to I shouldn't say copy it they just you know in the spirit of that original mic they've made a new one I even you know they have these videos called um how is it done or something like that and there's a whole video on them making their uh mic I'll see if I can find it maybe I'll put that in the link as well all right what else do we got here what else do we got now we're just pulling these out of a box on the floor in front of us this is a it is called the Elam 260 small diaphragm tube condenser but this one it's missing its badge it's badge broke off I got to glue back on this one is special in that it's all Chrome they are normally cream colored like a 251 um power supply with this obviously power supply yeah that's not cool to look at but um yeah yeah this I actually purchased um from zzy top and uh so with the the Providence of zzy top and being all Chrome I have uh I have dubbed this the El laminator and um this is um it's actually something that I think my friend Sunny dep Perry first told me about this and my main use for it is actually is a snare mic I strap it to my 57 or actually it's not a 57 it's a 545 the old school it looks like a ray gun no I mean they look like a 57 the predecessor to the 57 and um I've got a little clip that straps them together so I can kind of align them you know with this just a little bit back and um those are my top snare mics love like that I picked this up a while ago this this 545 uh cuz I just you know I I had heard a lot that that these older Shores do indeed sound better they do and um the other thing too is you know with with an sm57 it's such a durable microphone that it's it's almost never going to fail completely but they will start to sound bad yeah and so you go to a studio and um you know they might have a bunch of 57s and you put something up and you're like that's not sounding really quite like so you switch it out and like takes you like three of them like oh that's sounding good so I was like you know what let me just get you know a mic that I I know is going to sound good um my faves are we can talk about the uh obvious u95 badge that's hanging out looking at my face all right okay yeah so the sound Deluxe u195 smokes look at that this is a a microphone um made by David boach and um it's you know similar to a u87 but fatter it has this really great fat switch that gives it a really awesome low end I mean this thing's killer on base amps I mean it's killer on a lot of things you know I tend I I guess you know because when I track I tend to track bands live and so I have everything set up at once and I guess what that means for a mic collection is that despite having things that could do a lot of jobs well I tend to have things that I like my specific mics on and then I always use them on that like that is always always have one of those on a Bas amp you know like these live on snare Dr no reason to ever use them on anything else I I have a sound it looks 195 it's funny David Bach was down at my studio about 2 weeks ago and I showed him mine and my uh 195 is anodized black on the top and I was just like hey can you just tell me what the origin of this is kind of looked at me kind of weird and goes I think that was like a prototype or when they were looking for the bodies for the mic they had some anodi that were kind of like Beck or not sure and they they think think they couldn't get the colors right so uh they opened up mine and it looked like it was duct taped together and it was like oh yeah that's a prototype so I end up getting a prototype of this same mic there's three switches on the back one says uh pad mode which has fat and a normal and then low cut so when I put on a kick drum I put a low cut on it and then I boost it to fat and I put a pad on it and it seems I know that seems like it wouldn't make sense but when you add the fat it's a huge amount of low in but then when you put the cut it keeps it from being boomy so almost every Kick Drum I've done for my own band even the Chava svine MH uh the boach uh Bach or sound Deluxe So Bach has been recently bought by um UA and they own the bach name and brand I think they do make Bach 195s but if you can find a sound Deluxe 195 that'll be a really OG m and yeah greatest like Rob the guy that's in the studio next door to us he did that on the new Bronx record he used it on Le vocals you can have screamers Whisperers kuners Kick Drum guitar loud sound Source a Shaker I I will say it does have all the duties of a of a of a nman u87 I think Bach had mentioned they were kind of doing that but it is an it's kind of an original mic so yeah it's a pretty original mic I guess it's just closest classic mic you know being a a large condenser large diaphragm condenser fet would be a u87 would be like the closest vintage thing to it but it's not really a a copy like a lot of other mics are he was laughing when he opened it up because it just looked like it was I think it was literally electrical tape together and it was just but it wasn't something I don't think was supposed to be sold somehow it slipped to the cracks I picked it up in Watts uh which is our hardcore neighborhood Los Angeles it was a little scary and um I rolled up to this neighborhood that looked like you were going to get robbed and this guy just came out and goes here you go I was like oh thank God and so that was my that was my Bach 195 all right what else do you got Adam what else do we got a few years ago um I was put in touch with with Jay-Z microphones a company out of uh laia okay and um they also make a lot of their own proprietary mics and this is my favorite thing that they make um it's called the V1 they make a v67 they make a v47 they make a V12 and you can guess what all those are yeah are aiming to be and they're all good microphones but they certainly don't do what their name says yeah but this is a completely proprietary design that to me is the best thing they make and that's the v11 and um you can see it's it's actually been signed this one's been signed by uh L from that little mic clip from block party um we use these I use these on Tom's pretty much exclusively they also sound good on guitar amps I've done it but like I said since I have everything set up I tend to put my mics where I I think they Excel best and they stay there the one downside to that use is that they they are kind of large and they're they can be a bit intrusive but they're also built like a tank I mean you can see this was brand new before that record and she kind of beat the hell out of it which is why I I had her uh you know sign sign her her artwork um but this mic is still 100% despite getting bashed two other ones are you know they're still pristine that they've ever used on their drums I have heard about the Violet wow it's beautiful really really unique design where the capsule sits above the body but it looks made wow I love uh beautiful and acoustic instruments uh like you said like overhead the bh2 which I think stands for black hole you can see why and there is hole in the middle huge black hole in that and the really really what a design weird shock mount that goes in there that I always joke with people this shock mount looks like anal beads um you know maybe maybe this is all rated now but right it's okay I always make my videos not for kids so there you go this this shock mount like goes in here and holds it like that what what like inventive how can we make a design I mean I know you can't I'll have a picture of this but really unique the way it mounts here then like a fork mounts in the center of the mic it's obviously got the center kind of hollowed out and um heavy duty grill it looks it's Nifty because you know a lot of shock mounts if you if you need to to decouple your microphone with a shock mount a lot of shock mounts are so bulky that it then makes it difficult to actually get close to the source you're trying a mic this just stays out of the way I can get this mic you know it's shock mounted but I can still position that mic this is great really really I think it's a great design fantastic sounding microphone one thing I will say that I love about his particular mic collection is that it is vintage and there are some ones that are really cool but he has a lot of working class mic you can literally go out right now and buy like even these violets the sound Deluxe like the Box still we're going to get some other mics around the list too but I mean feel my collection is very pragmatic yeah yeah you know what I mean like there's a lot of people today and this is going to segue us into the next microphone okay there's a lot of people making clones of vintage microphones and some of those are really really good y but they're still really expensive I mean yes okay so the Vintage is $20,000 yeah but some of the Clones are still like $6,000 or lowest would be like 4500 4,000 that's still crazy expensive for a microphone it and you know you think with with the technology that we have at our Disposal today and all the knowledge and being able to study vintage microphones yeah and see what's great about them and and reproduce what is good about them but bring it modern you know cost wise make it uh you know heartier less delicate you should be able to do that and end up with a very inexpensive very very good sounding microphone that frankly is better than you know any vintage microphone and that leads me to talk about Eric heiserman all right Eric what's up Eric who does make some really kickass clones that are some of the best of the best if you are looking for a vintage mic clone what I really love is his type 19 this is a completely proprietary design original completely original large diaphragm small package again this thing is great on everything I have it almost exclusively on guitar amps it has completely replaced 414s in my microphone repertoire and I think this mic sounds better than any 44 vintage brass capsule whatever there is a a C12 in this one right no no this has a 47 capsule he now makes a version with a C12 that I'd be interested in but I I think part of what I like about this is probably that 47 capsule I mean if you can imagine it's kind of like having a Mike stand with the 47 capsule on the tip of it obviously if you have a vintus 47 there's like 10 lbs of tubes in electronics heiserman which I've been I've known of Heisman for years I actually have a p48 that has a heiserman uh C12 capsule in it but his capsule work is amazing this kind of looks like Darth Vader's head and oh it glows yeah it glows there's a blue H in there so when you plug it in but I will say probably an amazing breath of fresh air in modern microphon that he didn't it doesn't I mean even though it's Square you could say like a 414 it's not a 414 not at all so and the sound is massive huge lowend like I said it's just a capsule someone stuck it on a mic stand and they put it in front of a Sound Source mhm I mean you can't get any better than that yeah this thing is this is an amazing amazing microphone and a really good example now heiserman was supposed to hook us up with some mics heiserman what the hell's going on we're we're deprived we're starving of our heiserman no the the story on these also he made a short run a few years ago and they sold out and then obviously with the pandemic and resourcing um you know companies and whatever he needed to do to make these again only just recently they've come and hit the market again so if you are looking for a killer mic I'm pretty positive you can get one of these right now online and it's called the type 19 and like I said this is the original they have a new one came out and um like I said it will have a different capsule but you cannot go wrong with the type 19 man that's a sick I've made probably 10 15 20 records using you're using that on the kick drum a lot I used it on the kick drum almost every record I had done about maybe about a year and a half ago and then we all had these lenders of a few of them that were in Los Angeles so I'm grateful that we had a chance to really put this to the test and bass guitar guitars drums amazing here's a classic this is another one I purchased from uh infernal machine uh as a pair it's a Bier dnamic m88 that's just dynamic microphone but these are old these are these are from the 60s that one yeah if you don't know they still make them the TG they're solid black now um they're still really good they're not as good as these but it's real close the um the m88 is known for when I went recorded at Steve albini's when I first learn how to record he had this on the bass guitar which was pretty amazing but I've also heard that um The Rolling Stones Kick Drum was an m88 for a lot of years they had it these are a little bit more sensitive these aren't like the Invincible mics you can hear them Buckle a little bit but they're really I mean if you have a drummer that's like not sliming the kick drum but it's like padded and nice and he's he's a player I think the m88 are rocking for that you know and you know this is a mic I learned about from working with Nick lone he used it on Kick Drum as well and guitars I used it on Kick Drum for many many years I still do occasionally but it it replaced 57s on guitar amps for me as far as you know when I guitar amp but I but I guess I'm overdue I'm going to have to try this out this is an alien head Oham what is this thing called I forgot Periscope yeah this is the Periscope duh I got a special little purple eye on it and this thing is just like it's a condenser it's got a really trashy compressor built in like it's just instant trash you don't even need to do you don't need to do anything um it's built into actual copper piping you know throw that up as a drum room I've used it as a distant mic and and acoustic guitars um use that a lot actually on blinders with acoustic guitars have a you know a cleaner mic up close for the definition and you know this kind of off a bit to give a little more Vibe um blind blinders was one of the record that he was nice enough fite me down that I saw them track a little bit so if there is a release you really want to hear what Adam's been up to you can definitely check got the blinders record yeah and that was out just a few months ago correct yeah just came out in uh beginning of March all right what else do we got brother here's a mic that I'm not sure if if you're familiar with Manny um it's it's actually the uh original gravity wave microphone company look at this ommc right there OG GMC and no I'm kidding Manny made this yeah um check it out you're probably better at talking about it than I am well this is you know when I started working on ribbon microphones during the pandemic I just worked on every mic I could find and my friend brought over maybe 20 uh Chinese microphones this happens to be an mxlr 144 and every time I would go and mod the mics and check him he'd have a few of these scattered and I'd do another one I just realized they sounded they sounded incredible so I changed a ribbon on them some of them I have silver wiring basically tell my friends to buy them at Sweet Water for like I know they bucks sometimes they're on sale for 60 and then they ship them to my poel box and then I'll redo the ribbons and then I send it back to them but obviously you're locally in the LA so I just hooked these up with my buddies um Aaron the studio next door has maybe five six seven eight of these super pumped that people love these I do think if you bought this in it was stock and you plugged it in it would be okay but the ribbons inside are just terribly done so when I change and put a high quality ribbon in there it becomes as good as like you could say even in um an na8 by AA or an r84 It's a larger type of a ribbon really full bodied I think it's heavier sounding like thickness I mean I think I think fake names was the first record I used this on I think that's right when I got it and just worked on Brian Baker was just like he told me as the best guitar tone any engineer had ever dial and I was I was very flattered by that I I can say not only because I reiven them and I put my little tag on them but uh one of the reasons I think why you may like it is that these are figure eight so this is the front if you're looking at it sideways uh the sound comes in here and then there's sound that can be interact so when a speaker hits it I think like the low end may be a little bit of a buildup back here so the mic hears both sides and it really captures a nice picture of the speaker not fig is pretty standard on pretty much any ribbon microphone it's just the nature or any like this I mean somehow things like uh 500 is not that is a cardioid ribbon those are rare um they do exist while we're on the subject of ribbons okay this is a cool little dude I know that that sure sent me over I love that this is the 313 something like that wow that is a be cool looking super goth black with a red Grill and that is also a figure eight ribbon but the two sides are voice slightly different you've got a brighter side and you've got a darker side and it's cool and you you know the mount allows you to just turn it so you can kind of on the Fly you can kind of hear well there is a patent on that what it is is um once again on a ribbon mic you would think the ribbons in the center but if they mount the ribbon a little bit more forward somehow I think the back would be brighter and this would be more basier and also the technology sure sure bought yeah they didn't design this mic did they they bought this from they bought the technology because these aren't I don't believe regular ribbon which is alumium it's another kind of Technology of someone had made and designed a microphone and sure really loved it so they bought the mic the design the technology so these aren't really uh something like even if someone had one blown and they wanted me to repair it I would probably say you should have short DT because you you should have whatever it is they put inside this but it it feels like it has a massive heavy magnet in there yeah like for its size this is a really heavy mic love I mean it's almost as heavy as yours and it's it's it's heavier than yours feel that yeah I mean I I'll say I think that um smaller I haven't heard one person talk bad about these microphones and they're they're Road dogs they go on the road with bands and you put them up on your Rigs and they're fun yeah I use this kind of I guess my most memorable use of this is on um here it is on the uh the Leonard Cohen tribute album that I engineered and mixed for Larry Klein uh last year Emanuel Wilkins uh saxophone player this was on his Sachs no EQ no compression um all the way through the mix wow completely flat unaffected all the way through the mix that's how good this sounded on a you know admittedly amazing horn player um little bit of uh you know Valhalla plate Reverb that is it on every song of that record czy not touched one bit this thing sounds that good and again I even told him that it had like two voices so he could just if he wanted depending on the song I was told him like anytime you feel you want it brighter turn it around you didn't even have to tell me whatever you know he may or may not have actually used that about it but um uh it really amazing microphone that's awesome I'm sure well that tells you having a great musician and a great mic that is a win-win absolutely yeah I mean you know I I use a lot of microphone technique especially those records that I record for Larry because he he's asked me to do kind of more classic things you know to try and avoid eqing you know I think sometimes I'll add low end to the kick drum and I'll of course compress the vocal and that's essentially all I do other than placing microphones and having some of the best musicians with the best instruments I mean that's you know there's certain things that that you can get away with in those scenarios that maybe with a younger rock band you maybe have to work a little harder because drummers they haven't necessarily come in with with that with their sound dial so you kind of have to help them dial their sound there's not a lot of new dynamic microphones on the market tube mics condenser mics I guess Builders just feel that that's a sexier Market yeah um I don't really know of any other new newly designed uh Dynamic microphones but this thing I mean it does what an sm7 does it's got re20 Vibes um great for screaming vocals in fact you'll see am this is the idols right did they use this that's uh that's Joe's um you know what songs he would have sing on this the entire album Ultram mono wow um handeld that's held in the hand that's a heavy microph what's the model number if someone wanted to buy stealth stealth all right it's got a built-in preamp when you feed it Phantom pal what does it say on there says YouTube spicy candy and all the patience of a saint we love you nice well thank you this is this is a legendary Mike saying with a legendary there's a really great photo on my Instagram of him I saw you yeah yeah I'll show you singing like yeah check that out it's a really really cool photo I love that man well that's a good one yeah I mean you know I saw years ago you know working with ra Rage Against the Machine yeah Zach was using an re20 handheld and um you know it's it is heavy but there is there's certain there's something about being able to perform the way you do live as opposed to standing in front of an expensive microphone and having to hold still and not be able to move and to just be able to have was there any noise with that one anything no I think it probably has kind of some kind of internal um shock you know thing built in zero noise I mean I you know to me there's just something about letting a performer perform the way they're used to performing to get that out of them and you know like I said it it's been a really long time since I've used a fancy tube microphone on a vocal on my records I mean uh with block party we use an sm7 do you have the sm7 on there no I don't own one it's definitely high on my list it's another thing where where I've I've heard I've not been able to to prove this but I hear the old ones are better the current model is the sm7b yeah which I'm tempted because they do like custom colors on that mic now have you seen that on the website uh one of the mics that sure you can you can customize every piece oh I would green okay I would do it green with some kind of I don't know gold I don't know yeah just something obnoxious like you know um but if it's not going to sound as good as a vintage I'll kind of hold out and and find you know drop the dough on a vintage one well I will say that of maybe in the last two months I found myself falling back in love with an re 20m vocals we're going to end the Manny mic locker with the idols vocal mic Dynamic owned by Adam check out his link follow him on Instagram if you're a band that needs someone to track mix produce he can do it all he's a dear friend yeah man thank you so much thanks for having me yeah Manny's Mike Locker gel Park thank you look at that all right we're [Music] out hey guys I'm Cole and I own a business called cpix vintage where I do repairs on ribbon and dynamic microphones Manny asked me to come on and give just a quick pitch of my services so if you need any help with any ribbons or Dynamics I work on a lot of AKG d2s anything like that any microphone that you need re ribboned I can help you out hopefully you enjoyed watching this video of Manny's mic Locker I'm certainly pumped to check out all the videos and yeah again if you need any help with any microphone repairs I'm here to help you can go to my website cix vintage.com On's pretty on the outside who's pretty on the inside who's pretty on the outside it's the show of hands it's a c and arms it's the master to cleanse at 2 a.m. it's the show of hands it's a call to home it's the master plan it's the cl cl who Prett on the inside christas pretty on the outside who's pretty on the inside who's pretty on the outside is to show of it's a call to Arms it's the master cleans at 2 a.m. it's the show of hands it's a call to Earth it's the master plan it's the CL and who's pretty on the inside who's pretty on the outside who's pretty on the inside who's pretty on the outside [Applause] [Applause] who's pretty on the inside who's pretty on the outside who's pretty on the inside who's pretty on the [Music] outside who's pretty on the inside who's pretty on the outside he's pretty on the inside he's pretty on the [Applause] outside yay yay yeah yeah