Over the years, I’ve acquired an assortment of microphones that I use for recording sound effects and music. Some of these have specific functions, like the Soundfield ST450 and the Core Sound TetraMic, which allow me to make ambisonic recordings with both vertical and horizontal surround information and give me many options in post processing, using tools like Svein Berige’s Harpex-B, Dave McGriffy’s VVMic & VVMicVST, and Soundfield’s own SurroundZone 2. Similarly, my DPA 5100 surround microphone gives me a very easy, high-quality 5.1 recording with a very straightforward setup.
Others, like my Sennheiser MKH 20, 30, and 40 microphones have specific qualities that make them essential for certain circumstances: In the case of the Sennheisers, they’re very resistant to high humidity, something that I proved a couple of years ago by recording underneath Niagara Falls.
I also have contact mics for recording things that vibrate and hydrophones for things that make noises underwater and a couple of cheap and cheerful electret condenser mics, built into XLR shells, that I can almost regard as disposable and that get used in situations where they might get damaged.
But I also have a collection of mics that get used in a way that I’m sure the original designers never intended.
Most of you will have come across the DPA 4060/4061 microphones at some point in your lives. They’ve been very much the standard head-worn vocal microphones for musicals almost since they arrived on the scene around the turn of the century, partly because of their tiny profile, but mostly because they sound amazingly good. Agreed, they’re not cheap, and most rental companies treat them as expendable items because of the harsh treatment that gets meted out to them in terms of sweat, makeup, marker-pen, and other assorted gunge that collects on the microphone and the cable during the course of a long-running musical. It’s always an interesting moment when you introduce a new producer to the prospect of spending several thousand dollars on things that are regarded as expendable.
Let’s be honest, quite a few of these microphones, maybe somewhat past their best, maybe not, find their way into the tool kits of A1s and A2s, and can be brought out in an emergency or when a show doesn’t have an adequate budget, but quite a few more find their way onto eBay, more or less instantly recognized by the fact that they have been terminated for Sennheiser wireless microphones and have cables that have been painted to match a particular performer’s hair color. Very many years ago, I acquired a pair of these, in pretty good condition, to try out something I’d had on my mind for a while.
I’ve always kept a small recorder handy at home for instant recordings of any interesting noises that might be happening out in the street, be it weather, traffic, birds, or animals, but setting up a suitable microphone in a hurry has always been a problem, as has been the need to open the window, that is, until my 4061s arrived. I got hold of a couple of powering modules, a pair of Rycote Lavalier Windjammers, and made enough of a gap in a corner of one of our wooden window frames to thread the microphones through to the outside world.
Initially, I had them cabled to a Zoom H4, but the relatively high pre-amp noise proved a bit of a problem coupled with the low sensitivity of the 4061 as far as quieter sounds were concerned, so my backup Sound Devices 702 was pressed into service, along with a CL-1 interface, coupled to a cheap and cheerful wireless remote from eBay.
With the 702 in standby mode, I can drop it into record remotely from anywhere in our apartment, and the results have been pretty useful over the years. If you are someone who’s bought in to my Dollar Deal effects bundles, then you’ve already got some of the recordings made this way, from birdsong and dogs in the night to complete thunderstorms, where the extended low-frequency of the DPA mics really shows up.
What’s really astonishing is that this pair has been thumbtacked up outside the window for more than ten years now, subjected to wind and rain and, on a couple of occasions recently, one of the local birds attempting to pull the fur off the Rycotes to line a nest, but they are still going strong and producing excellent results.
Encouraged by the results from a pair of 4061s, I invested in Len Moskowitz’s Core Sound High End Binaural rig, consisting of another pair of DPAs, this time the higher sensitivity 4060s, connected to a small battery and LF filter box and terminating in a 3.5mm stereo mini-jack that connects with any decent handheld digital. With a simple jack to XLR adapter cable, I can also plug this into my other Sound Devices recorders, when required.
Once again, the results, either as binaural pair clipped to a headband, or as a spaced pair on a makeshift stereo bar, are simply astounding, and the fact that the microphones all but disappear makes the system extremely useful for recording effects in situations where a bigger, more noticeable system might well be intrusive. I’ve recorded effects in cathedrals, railway stations, subway trains, busy shopping malls, and restaurants with no one being any the wiser, as all that is seen is a rather eccentric old guy wearing a pair of headphones. No one sees the two tiny black microphones clipped to my hat, or to my backpack, so no one interrupts.
I now have a second set of ex-musical theatre 4061s, running from a battery box that I made myself, that get used for slightly less critical work and has spent the last couple of months on loan to a friend immersed in one of her beehives as part of a research project.
They came back rather waxier than when they left, but a good clean of the grilles, and they were back to their old selves again, none the worse for their hive immersion. I’m hoping that she’ll get around to sending me some of the recording one day, as well.
For recording outdoors in more severe weather with the 4061s, I’ve adapted an old cut-down Rycote rig with a small disc separating the two microphones: It’s not a Jecklin or a Schneider Disk system, but it does seem to work rather well for effects work.
And now I’ve got a nice new DPA 4060 stereo kit, with a plethora of mounting options, including the boundary layer discs and the DPA DAD 6001 Phantom power adapters, but these are going to be kept for best, for discreet music recordings in concert halls where a bigger setup might prove distracting.
If you’ve got a pair of these mics from a show, and you fancy seeing what you can do with them, it’s possible to build a simple circuit to enable them to run from a 9V PP3-type battery. Just do a web search, and you should find the circuit diagram in a number of places. If not, here’s the one that I use:
You can build a couple of these onto a piece of strip-board in half an hour if you’ve got the necessary components. Take care with your soldering, and then enjoy the end result.
John Leonard is an award-winning designer who has been working in theatre sound for more than 40 years. In his spare time, he records anything that makes an interesting noise in high-definition surround sound. His sound effects libraries are available online at www.asoundeffect.com.
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