Los Angeles, CA (December 5, 2012)—When working with The Avett Brothers to record their latest album, The Carpenter, engineer Ryan Hewitt brought along his Mojave Audio MA-300 multi pattern and MA-200 vacuum tube condenser microphones.
Hewitt used his Mojave MA-300s to capture performances of guitarist/vocalist Seth Avett, as well as for capturing room sound for the drums. Meanwhile, the MA-200s became go-to mics for piano recording.
“Most of the sessions for The Carpenter took place at Echo Mountain Recording in Ashville, NC, which was built in an old church,” Hewitt reports. “I found that my MA-300 was the ideal solution for capturing Seth Avett’s performances. When recording a person playing acoustic guitar and singing simultaneously, it’s impossible to have complete isolation between the instrument and voice. With that said, it’s important to use the mic’s polar pattern to your advantage so that you can minimize bleed in order to achieve a modern, isolated sound. When you’re working with a producer like Rick Rubin, you really can’t have an excuse as to why there is so much bleed. You need to have an answer for that-and my answer was the MA-300.”
He continues, “To gain as much isolation between the voice and guitar as possible,” he continued, “I took advantage of the MA-300’s figure 8 polar pattern. By aiming the top of the MA-300 at Seth’s mouth, the mic’s null [a point in the sound field where the field quantity is zero] rejected as much of the vocal as possible, enabling me to capture the guitar performance with minimal bleed so that I’d have maximum control over the track during the mix.”
Hewitt also used his pair of MA-300s to capture room sound for the drums. “The mics were placed about 15 feet from the drums to capture the fullness of the space.”
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