Hello there! Welcome to my very first blog post. I thought I would kick things off talking about a microphone that is very near and dear to my heart. It’s the Avantone CVC-12. It is the mic that Taylor Swift used for the Fearless album and a lot of the Speak Now album as well. Let me tell you the story about how that microphone ended up capture such iconic vocals.
My dear friend Ray Kennedy and I made an album for my wife Stephanie Chapman in 2007. It was the last album that I made right before I went into the studio with Taylor to make Fearless. While Ray and I were working, Avantone (which was a brand new company at the time) sent Ray their brand new CV-12 for him to check out. Right away, he replaced the tube that it came with with a new old-stock tube. Now - I don’t know very much about the technical side of recording, so I just took his word for it that it would be better.
Ray, being very generous with all the good things that come his way, lent me the microphone to take home and try. I had the microphone on a stand and plugged in my guest bedroom make-shift studio. Taylor had to come over the house that day and punch in a word on one of her vocals for one of the first songs we cut for Fearless. So, being the rather lazy engineer that I am, just armed the track that the Avantone CV-12 was plugged into to let her make that quick recording.
When she came in and sat down, I had the headphones ready and the mic on. She leaned forward and said “test test” into the mic. I’ll never forget what happened next - she threw her headphones down onto her lap and said “THIS IS MY MIC. I LOVE THIS.” I said, “Great! Love that you love it!!”
I called Ray with this test result, and he said immediately that I should keep the mic and use it for the rest of the record. And that’s exactly what we did. I took it with me from studio to studio and had this mic ready to go wherever Taylor and I recorded. It was what we used in spite of it being a literal fraction of the cost of all the other microphones available at any of the studios where we worked. I always got a laugh out of the fact that this 400 dollar mic was running the place.
Sometimes, it’s not how expensive the gear is - it’s how it sounds. It’s how it feels. And most importantly, it’s how it matches up with the voice or instrument that it’s capturing. I have a link to the mic on Amazon if you want to grab one yourself. And if you want to go all the way with it, grab a new old-stock tube to use. I’m sorry I don’t know what kind to tell you to get - but i’m sure you can figure it out if you want to get nerdy. I’ve been an ignorant engineer my whole career and I don’t feel like changing at this point.