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Avant Electronics BV-1 Microphone
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August 6, 2009
Product Price
999.00
999.00
Product Features
- Dramatic, chic look
- Includes shockmount and primo 7-pin cable
- Nine different pickup patterns
- 80 Hz roll-off, -10 dB pad
Product Specs
- TYPE: Tube Type Condenser
- POLAR PATTERNS: Nine, conveniently selected at the power supply
- FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 25Hz to 20kHz
- MAXIMUM SPL: 134 dB (0.5% THD @ 1000 Hz) (144 with pad engaged)
- S/N Ratio: 78 dB
- SELF NOISE: <18 dB
- SENSITIVITY: -35 dBV
- POWER REQUIREMENTS: Power supply switchable, either 115 or 230 VAC
- TUBE TYPE: Russian 6072A
First Impressions
If you're like me, you find most microphone reviews to be EXCRUCIATINGLY boring-- I'm talking about like in the popular, vanishing gear magazines. I swear-- they read like there's a limited number of stock phrases the writers are allowed to use, and they must end each and every review with this phrase: "If you're looking for a mic with/for/that has [blank], then you should definitely give this one a listen/test drive/buy it sight unseen." Sometimes they'll be all daring and say, "You owe it to yourself" instead of, "You should," but they probably need special permission from the executive editor. Are you like me? Come on-- admit it. You'll never get anywhere in life without being somewhat slightly egotistical and narcissistic-- you channel all your dissatisfaction into improving your output, so the world will be even LESS justified in totally ignoring you. That's kind of how it works. Not that you should take this good advice and go overboard, because we all know people who make you want to shout, "Hey! Buddy! What about a little subtractive EQ on the attitude, how 'bout?"
In a dream, I am staring at a piece of rackmount gear, trying to make sense of its blinking lights. One in particular I zero in on, but its tag is hard to read. Finally, I make it out-- it says "Blinking Indicator."
That could serve as an excellent metaphor for something, and as soon as I figure it out I'll let you know. But I'll take a stab: I've seen people go absolutely nuts with gear-buying decisions... "Let's see... what kind of hammer do I need to kill this flea?... The biggest one I can find!" Or ads: "Do you want to buy a microphone from real people, or from a faceless corporation?" Hmmm... that's a tough one. How about a corporation wearing a mask?
The truth is, men like Ken Avant and Glen Heffner (together the geniuses behind Avant Electronics and all the wonders being created there) understand that your eyes will fix on the gear before you. Equipment. Electronics. Lotta little parts, soldered together. That isn't what matters. What matters is the emotional reality these tools will pivot you up to. What matters is the essence of life itself, those teardrops moments of peak experience-- lotsa times having to do with music. Does music mean much to you? I feel a kind of duality about it all-- on the one hand, it's just entertainment, after all, trivial, not really "necessary" like food and shelter. On the other hand-- music touches people's souls in a way that a ham sandwich never will. Do you know who Stephen Foster was? Do you know who was the head chef in Abe Lincoln's White House? Okay.
Fine dining, now that's maybe a good metaphor for this mic. The case it ships in is a full tilt suitcase: tweed with faux alligator trim, lined with crushed velour, maroon color. New Orleans cathouse is the vibe. If you think I'm going to carry a microphone around in this, you're crazy. I've modded mine into a suitcase for JP-1, hollowing out the center partition and in the process discovering it's constructed of 3/8' birch plywood. You got the Taj Mahal, you got Cuban cigars, and you got the Avant BV-1 traveling case. Call these garishly excessive luxury items if you like. I call it grabbing for gusto. I want to see the look on the face of the faceless corporation, and then the withering look visited on the nameless underlings, when they sheepishly admit they've been sending out mics in generic aluminum flight cases you can pick up at any Home Depot.
If you're like me, you find most microphone reviews to be EXCRUCIATINGLY boring-- I'm talking about like in the popular, vanishing gear magazines. I swear-- they read like there's a limited number of stock phrases the writers are allowed to use, and they must end each and every review with this phrase: "If you're looking for a mic with/for/that has [blank], then you should definitely give this one a listen/test drive/buy it sight unseen." Sometimes they'll be all daring and say, "You owe it to yourself" instead of, "You should," but they probably need special permission from the executive editor. Are you like me? Come on-- admit it. You'll never get anywhere in life without being somewhat slightly egotistical and narcissistic-- you channel all your dissatisfaction into improving your output, so the world will be even LESS justified in totally ignoring you. That's kind of how it works. Not that you should take this good advice and go overboard, because we all know people who make you want to shout, "Hey! Buddy! What about a little subtractive EQ on the attitude, how 'bout?"
In a dream, I am staring at a piece of rackmount gear, trying to make sense of its blinking lights. One in particular I zero in on, but its tag is hard to read. Finally, I make it out-- it says "Blinking Indicator."
That could serve as an excellent metaphor for something, and as soon as I figure it out I'll let you know. But I'll take a stab: I've seen people go absolutely nuts with gear-buying decisions... "Let's see... what kind of hammer do I need to kill this flea?... The biggest one I can find!" Or ads: "Do you want to buy a microphone from real people, or from a faceless corporation?" Hmmm... that's a tough one. How about a corporation wearing a mask?
The truth is, men like Ken Avant and Glen Heffner (together the geniuses behind Avant Electronics and all the wonders being created there) understand that your eyes will fix on the gear before you. Equipment. Electronics. Lotta little parts, soldered together. That isn't what matters. What matters is the emotional reality these tools will pivot you up to. What matters is the essence of life itself, those teardrops moments of peak experience-- lotsa times having to do with music. Does music mean much to you? I feel a kind of duality about it all-- on the one hand, it's just entertainment, after all, trivial, not really "necessary" like food and shelter. On the other hand-- music touches people's souls in a way that a ham sandwich never will. Do you know who Stephen Foster was? Do you know who was the head chef in Abe Lincoln's White House? Okay.
Fine dining, now that's maybe a good metaphor for this mic. The case it ships in is a full tilt suitcase: tweed with faux alligator trim, lined with crushed velour, maroon color. New Orleans cathouse is the vibe. If you think I'm going to carry a microphone around in this, you're crazy. I've modded mine into a suitcase for JP-1, hollowing out the center partition and in the process discovering it's constructed of 3/8' birch plywood. You got the Taj Mahal, you got Cuban cigars, and you got the Avant BV-1 traveling case. Call these garishly excessive luxury items if you like. I call it grabbing for gusto. I want to see the look on the face of the faceless corporation, and then the withering look visited on the nameless underlings, when they sheepishly admit they've been sending out mics in generic aluminum flight cases you can pick up at any Home Depot.
In Use
I brought the BV-1 to a rehearsal session for a piano duo (legends in our time Polly van der Linde and George Lopez) as they prepared for a concert series to begin my rigorous testing. This was Argentiny, tangoey music. When they'd stop to focus in on a troublesome passage, the lingering, dissolving notes hung there in the air, shimmering. Their breezy banter was crisp and genuine, and the sound of the room was captured in a specific, utterly true-to-life way. I love acid tests-- my inner sadist?-- so I drug the mic back to the furthest corner and opened the pattern up to omni-- the sound only got smoother and blendier, never losing the force and drama and heft of the slamming chords and the detail of the thrilling accents and trills. Forgiving: that's the tagline for this mic. Most mics render off-axis input with varying degrees of ineptitude and irritability. Not this baby. While the source directly infront is devastatingly, enrapturingly accurate, it had a way of rendering EVERYTHING that hit in a full, realistic, engaging way.
The "P.T. Cruiser-esqueness" of the mic's design mesmerized them. I guess I'm kind of jaded about this stuff, and it's refreshing to be brought back to Earth by the rapturous, captivated, staring wide-eyed wonder of the un-jaded, the jadeless. George, who has an infectious grin that lights up a room under normal circumstances, was positively aglow, gushing about its fine "50's" air. He noted that I would usually mic a piano in stereo, and I said this was only a test, the mic is really meant to be a vocal mic because that's the most demanding application you could call for.
"Do you want me to sing?" he asked? He immediately launched into a tune he'd composed for a friend's wedding (it was a little maudlin, I gotta say-- all about meeting in Heaven at the end of their lives-- but hey, you don't ask for grim, nihilistic existentialism at a wedding.) I barely had time to wrangle the mic stand around astride the piano bench, but you don't stop people in full flight. Even at a right angle to his voice, it caught his soaring, tender elocution and wisp of vibrato with startling immediacy. If it's not too simplistic, this mic makes things sound "good." It makes listening to the playback a pleasure so much so that you get lost in it.
Next up, it was off to a music store where I'd arranged to sample the vast array of brass and woodwinds in stock. The tuba was beefy and lumbering-- it's amazing to hear a tuba played with elan. There's alot of warbling and almost funk-like potential to the instrument. The trombones were blazing, alive, rich and supremely colorful-- and the French horn, which I have always found to be notoriously difficult to record given the earthquaking density of its sound, all too often overwhelming, like a sub cabinet gone haywire, came through layered and pumping, especially the "hunter's reveille" or whatever you call it, which I learned was the original purpose of the horn, to signal to the fox hunters various messages and prompts. And of course after the hunt, around the fire, they've got these horns lying around, so what happened? They played music! See the things you learn? The trumpets were searing, the closest thing to pure, stinging airborne tone. The flugelhorn was woozy, jazzy. The coronet was cutting and brisk. The clarinet was "woody" and soft, shapely and toned. The saxophone was blistering, raspy, brash and steamy! Through all of this, the mic caught the room 'verb very nicely, enveloping everything warmly, in a cuddling way.
The nylon string guitar was a standout. I'm used to hearing it as muffled and wimpy, but this here was wondrous-- the Spanish flamenco passages dreamy, accentuated and full of subtlety. And what's a mic review without a kazoo? (You see THAT in a gear magazine?) Which was biting and vibrational. Whatever you do-- don't record nails on a chalkboard with this thing!
If this was a gear magazine, I would be eating up the space usually reserved for the classifieds by now. Do I care? Do you? Onward!
I persuaded my friend Barry Hyman, renowned multi-instrumentalist, band leader and composer to improvise a song using his collection of exotic ethnic instruments: udu drum, tamboura, talking drum, finger cymbals and sitar. The results of this experiment confirmed my suspicions-- if it makes a sound, the BV-1 will capture it effortlessly, marvelously, and with total authenticity.
Here is Barry's song: http://www.4shared.com/file/123141597/7f5e57b2/Not_Quite_Awake.html
I also did a session with the alt folk duo Soul Miners, again tracking exclusively with the BV-1, here: http://www.4shared.com/file/118567874/38bea566/Alberta.html
These are the a'capella vocal tracks, to show you the stunning way it captures the human voice: http://www.4shared.com/file/118567516/8832f09f/Alberta__vocal_acapella_.html
I brought the BV-1 to a rehearsal session for a piano duo (legends in our time Polly van der Linde and George Lopez) as they prepared for a concert series to begin my rigorous testing. This was Argentiny, tangoey music. When they'd stop to focus in on a troublesome passage, the lingering, dissolving notes hung there in the air, shimmering. Their breezy banter was crisp and genuine, and the sound of the room was captured in a specific, utterly true-to-life way. I love acid tests-- my inner sadist?-- so I drug the mic back to the furthest corner and opened the pattern up to omni-- the sound only got smoother and blendier, never losing the force and drama and heft of the slamming chords and the detail of the thrilling accents and trills. Forgiving: that's the tagline for this mic. Most mics render off-axis input with varying degrees of ineptitude and irritability. Not this baby. While the source directly infront is devastatingly, enrapturingly accurate, it had a way of rendering EVERYTHING that hit in a full, realistic, engaging way.
The "P.T. Cruiser-esqueness" of the mic's design mesmerized them. I guess I'm kind of jaded about this stuff, and it's refreshing to be brought back to Earth by the rapturous, captivated, staring wide-eyed wonder of the un-jaded, the jadeless. George, who has an infectious grin that lights up a room under normal circumstances, was positively aglow, gushing about its fine "50's" air. He noted that I would usually mic a piano in stereo, and I said this was only a test, the mic is really meant to be a vocal mic because that's the most demanding application you could call for.
"Do you want me to sing?" he asked? He immediately launched into a tune he'd composed for a friend's wedding (it was a little maudlin, I gotta say-- all about meeting in Heaven at the end of their lives-- but hey, you don't ask for grim, nihilistic existentialism at a wedding.) I barely had time to wrangle the mic stand around astride the piano bench, but you don't stop people in full flight. Even at a right angle to his voice, it caught his soaring, tender elocution and wisp of vibrato with startling immediacy. If it's not too simplistic, this mic makes things sound "good." It makes listening to the playback a pleasure so much so that you get lost in it.
Next up, it was off to a music store where I'd arranged to sample the vast array of brass and woodwinds in stock. The tuba was beefy and lumbering-- it's amazing to hear a tuba played with elan. There's alot of warbling and almost funk-like potential to the instrument. The trombones were blazing, alive, rich and supremely colorful-- and the French horn, which I have always found to be notoriously difficult to record given the earthquaking density of its sound, all too often overwhelming, like a sub cabinet gone haywire, came through layered and pumping, especially the "hunter's reveille" or whatever you call it, which I learned was the original purpose of the horn, to signal to the fox hunters various messages and prompts. And of course after the hunt, around the fire, they've got these horns lying around, so what happened? They played music! See the things you learn? The trumpets were searing, the closest thing to pure, stinging airborne tone. The flugelhorn was woozy, jazzy. The coronet was cutting and brisk. The clarinet was "woody" and soft, shapely and toned. The saxophone was blistering, raspy, brash and steamy! Through all of this, the mic caught the room 'verb very nicely, enveloping everything warmly, in a cuddling way.
The nylon string guitar was a standout. I'm used to hearing it as muffled and wimpy, but this here was wondrous-- the Spanish flamenco passages dreamy, accentuated and full of subtlety. And what's a mic review without a kazoo? (You see THAT in a gear magazine?) Which was biting and vibrational. Whatever you do-- don't record nails on a chalkboard with this thing!
If this was a gear magazine, I would be eating up the space usually reserved for the classifieds by now. Do I care? Do you? Onward!
I persuaded my friend Barry Hyman, renowned multi-instrumentalist, band leader and composer to improvise a song using his collection of exotic ethnic instruments: udu drum, tamboura, talking drum, finger cymbals and sitar. The results of this experiment confirmed my suspicions-- if it makes a sound, the BV-1 will capture it effortlessly, marvelously, and with total authenticity.
Here is Barry's song: http://www.4shared.com/file/123141597/7f5e57b2/Not_Quite_Awake.html
I also did a session with the alt folk duo Soul Miners, again tracking exclusively with the BV-1, here: http://www.4shared.com/file/118567874/38bea566/Alberta.html
These are the a'capella vocal tracks, to show you the stunning way it captures the human voice: http://www.4shared.com/file/118567516/8832f09f/Alberta__vocal_acapella_.html
PROS
- Premier vocal mic, smokes any and all competition
- Singers will linger, even after the take, just to listen to themselves
- Best possible way to record anything musical or auditory
CONS
- There is only piping on the alligator trim on the handle side of the case
Conclusion
And this discussion naturally leads us to chain saws.
I'm amazed, maybe, at the way gas-cap-for-chainsaw technology has evolved over that last say thirty years. Say at first it was just that, a cap. It could fall from your fingers into the snow. Then, there there was a plastic, non-gasoline dissolvable strap that held the cap loosely, allowing it to spin but hanging it tethered to the tank. But the plastic strap sometimes blocked the ease of pouring gas in. So then the "strap" became a supple, string-like string, so the cap hangs out of the way. Now the cap only takes a half-turn to tighten-- and the lug by which you turn it is now almost a proper handle that tucks away, flush to the body of the saw. It's EXACTLY like someone is asking a focus group-- me, in my dreams-- "what about working with this saw is ever-so-slightly annoying, I mean anything, anything at all, the slightest inarticulatable thing."
It's kind of the same way with the evolution of mics, and this astounding marvel of engineering in particular. The next thing would be a mic with a built in limiter, a soft knee compressor/limiter with a multi-track 96/24 recording capability and wireless connection to any DAW "throughout the Universe," as I've seen written in the more expansive modeling contracts. You laugh! Just you wait!
So here's my final phrase: both Ken and Glen have a very dignified way of presenting themselves publicly, as they should, they are both outstanding people with incredible resumes and are seriously dedicated to their work. But if you're looking for a real hoot, get ahold of them after hours, off the clock... I've got messages on my answering machine that are, to put it mildly, rather entertaining. You owe it to yourself.
And this discussion naturally leads us to chain saws.
I'm amazed, maybe, at the way gas-cap-for-chainsaw technology has evolved over that last say thirty years. Say at first it was just that, a cap. It could fall from your fingers into the snow. Then, there there was a plastic, non-gasoline dissolvable strap that held the cap loosely, allowing it to spin but hanging it tethered to the tank. But the plastic strap sometimes blocked the ease of pouring gas in. So then the "strap" became a supple, string-like string, so the cap hangs out of the way. Now the cap only takes a half-turn to tighten-- and the lug by which you turn it is now almost a proper handle that tucks away, flush to the body of the saw. It's EXACTLY like someone is asking a focus group-- me, in my dreams-- "what about working with this saw is ever-so-slightly annoying, I mean anything, anything at all, the slightest inarticulatable thing."
It's kind of the same way with the evolution of mics, and this astounding marvel of engineering in particular. The next thing would be a mic with a built in limiter, a soft knee compressor/limiter with a multi-track 96/24 recording capability and wireless connection to any DAW "throughout the Universe," as I've seen written in the more expansive modeling contracts. You laugh! Just you wait!
So here's my final phrase: both Ken and Glen have a very dignified way of presenting themselves publicly, as they should, they are both outstanding people with incredible resumes and are seriously dedicated to their work. But if you're looking for a real hoot, get ahold of them after hours, off the clock... I've got messages on my answering machine that are, to put it mildly, rather entertaining. You owe it to yourself.
Buy the
Avant Electronics BV-1 Large Capsule Multi-Pattern Tube Microphone
at Front End Audio