New York (August 9, 2011)—-FOH engineer Marc Carolan has been miking Muse singer/guitarist Matthew Bellamy’s guitar cabinet with a Royer R-122 live active ribbon microphone.
Carolan reports, “Between myself, Adam Taylor (monitor engineer) and Jason Baskin (guitar tech), we came up with an optimum placement of about 4 inches from the cone and about 2 inches off center. While his cabinet produces extreme SPLs, it also delivers a wide range of tones and feels. The Royer R-122 Live is the only mic that can handle all of this. I like the fact that there’s no artificial high end boost as is found with other manufacturers’ microphones. The R-122 Live remains true to delivering the tonality Matt is trying to achieve.”
Presently, Carolan has two R-122 Live ribbon microphones, with one mic dedicated to Bellamy’s guitar sound and the other as a backup. “In all honesty, the Royer R-122 Live is the only guitar mic I need with Muse,” he said. “All the complexity of Matt’s sound ends up being reproduced by that one mic—and it sounds massive.”
When he’s not on tour, Carolan usually finds himself entrenched in a variety of studio projects. “When using the R-122 Live in the studio,” Carolan says, “I find myself experimenting with a variety of microphone positions. The figure 8 polar pattern and the nulls that are an integral part of the mic’s sonic signature provide tremendous flexibility. The amount of isolation from other sound sources that these mics can achieve with careful positioning is really impressive.”
In addition to his use of the Royer R-122 Live, Carolan recently began working with a pair of Royer Labs’ R-101 passive ribbon microphones. “I’m still experimenting with them,” he says, “but so far, they have proven to be very versatile microphones. I see a lot of possibilities for the R-101.”
Marc Carolan
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Royer Labs
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