Completing a series of dates across Canada and the US with Snow Patrol, the band return for a number of UK dates, including a sell-out two nights at Leeds' Millennium Square, before returning to the States throughout June and July for their first headline US tour. The band's FOH engineer, Mark Jones, approached Audio-Technica at the beginning of the year with a view to extending the kind of performance he had experienced using AT4050s on overheads and guitar cabs, across the entire sound mix.
"I approached A-T, principally about the vocal mics," he explains. "We wanted something that was very smooth-sounding, but we've got a singer who walks in front of the PA, so we can't use a condenser. So I was looking for a very tight pick-up dynamic capsule, with a sound quality as close as possible to a condenser. The Artist Elite AE6100 gave us the result we were after on both counts. The feedback rejection is pretty phenomenal, it performs extremely well in front of the PA."
The Artist Elite AE6100 is an extremely high quality, hypercardioid dynamic vocal microphone, which delivers clean articulation, fast transients, high-output, and an exceptionally open sounding, studio-like signal quality. With a polar pattern tailored for outstanding on-axis response, the microphone offers maximum feedback rejection and superior anti-shock engineering for low handling noise.
Other models in the line-up include the dual dynamic/condenser element AE2500 on kick, ATM23HE on snare top, AE5100 on snare bottom, AT4041 on hi-hats, ATM35s on toms, and the aforementioned AT4050s on overheads and cabs. "I have been really happy with them," continues Jones, "especially the AT4050 which is just a really great microphone, that I always carry with me on tour."
(Sarah Rushton Read)
