Los Angeles, CA (October 14, 2026)—Grammy-nominated producer, songwriter and engineer Suzy Shinn, known for her work with Panic! at the Disco, Weezer and Fall Out Boy, has made AEA ribbon microphones a fixture in her recording process for more than a decade.
Shinn was first introduced to AEA microphones while working with producer Jake Sinclair, who kept an R88 stereo ribbon positioned over the drums and an R44 in the center of his studio. She had never encountered a stereo ribbon microphone before but quickly became drawn to the sound and flexibility of the setup.
“The drums, time and time again, sounded incredible,” Shinn recalls. “The R44 became part of the drum sound, but we also used it to record gang vocals.”
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When Shinn established her own studio, the R88 became one of her first major microphone purchases. Her collection has since grown to include an R92, a pair of N8s, an R44 and the TRP3 dual-channel preamp.
“The R88 just sounds like it’s in the room,” Shinn says. “It isn’t overly hyped, as opposed to a small condenser. It brings some grounding to my recordings.” The R88 has also become one of Shinn’s go-to microphones for acoustic guitar. “I put it around the 12th fret, maybe a foot and a half away, and it captures that sound so naturally,” she says.
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When she wants an additional perspective, Shinn may combine a close ribbon microphone with a condenser placed farther back in the room. On upright piano, she takes a similar approach, placing a pair of N8s close to the instrument and occasionally supplementing them with distant AKG 414s.
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“Sometimes I’ll use the N8s close and 414s farther away,” she says. “I want to capture as much as I can in terms of the darker and brighter perspectives and then experiment with the contradicting colors.”
