What kind of Mic is Fapy using on those 90's recordings...?

Russell Letson

I have conflicting feelings about reproducing ancient sound-reproduction tech. On the one hand, much of the vibe of, say, a Howlin' Wolf record is the result of Wolf's pipes overdriving inadequate mike pre-amps--part of the sonic experience of the recordings is that breakup. On the other hand, I want to reach through the recording to find what Wolf must have sounded like in a club. (Probably some sonic overlap, since he would probably have overpowered the PA and guitar amps as well.) A better example is probably the early recordings of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith--in both cases, I would gladly repurchase my entire library of their work if there were a way of hearing them without the bandwidth limitations and noise/distortion profiles of 78 recording tech.

An example from a different field: I grew up on old black and white movies, but often on TV and even in theatres in 16mm prints many generations from the original negatives. When I got to see a fresh 35mm print of a Marx Brothers movie (Horse Feathers), I was blown away at how good even a visually unambitious Hollywood production could look. My old-movie experience is tied to relatively fuzzy images with degraded contrast and even sprocket damage and bad splices--but those are bugs, not features, and I'd give them up in a New York minute.

Appel

Yes ... but on the other hand, the techniques that were resurrected for those two lejazzetal recordings capture a different aspect of live recording. Rather than create a simulacrum of live performance, with each instrument isolated from one another and then treated in various ways with gadgetry to achieve balance, necessitating a great many steps to create the illusion of unification, these recordings create balance - the "mix" if we must use that horrific word - by the physical position of the musicians in the room, with respect to each other and the microphone. I'll take that far more simply created illusion over that of more sophisticated contrivances any day, all day, every day.

But it depends on what we want out of the music, how our ears work ... your ear for fidelity of sound is probably very different, and I'll allow that it might be superior, to mine, and it would follow that what you need from your listening experience will differ from mine. That's ok!

I love the example you draw from film, and I think I understand what you mean. Just looking at it from my own angle, is all.