Next stop Frankfurt!

After a period of intense preparations for the Prolight + sound fair, we are finally off to Frankfurt tonight.

If you are visiting the fair, please pay us a visit and have a chat with me or our R&D manager, Per Ove. Also take the opportunity to be the first to see the BDM-01 IRL.

We are exhibiting together with our german distributor, FBM Audio, in hall 8.0 - booth C05.

See you there!

Hand held condensers continued

I'll keep ranting on about hand held condensers a little bit more.

I'm a musician myself and back in the days bought one of the "standard" dynamic mics that everyone else uses. It wasn't until I started working closely with Milab that I realised there was a whole world of microphones to choose from and much better models than the "standard" choice. I find it a bit strange that most musicians spend a fortune on their instruments except for singers, who in many cases just buy a 100$ mic without even testing the competitors. Even a world class mic like the LSR-3000 is still much cheaper than a decent guitar.

I've used the LSR-1000 for a while now and couldn't go back to dynamic again. On one of the first gigs a did with it, I played outdoors on a summer wedding and performed a duet with a female vocalist (we both had LSR-1000:s). After the ceremony a man came up from the audience and told me that it was the best vocal sound he had ever heard and wondered what mics we were using. In 20 years of live performances, that had never happened to me before.

Someone wrote in a musicians forum that condensers are for big artists on big stages with good engineers. I would say the opposite - a condenser often needs less eq and cuts through the mix much better than a dynamic. It makes a real audible difference, even (or especially) if you are performing on a sub-par PA system. That's why, wherever I'm performing, I always bring my own mic.

Historic models

As you may know, the history of Milab is a bit complicated; It started with PML in 1941 and resulted in two separate microphone companies in the late 70s. I often get email regarding information on older microphone models. We've decided to put only the models who have carried the Milab name on the "Historic models" page on the website, but if you have questions regarding older models just drop us a few lines and we will help you with more info.

We also perform service and maintenance on most older models. Many old Milab/PML mics are still hard currency on ebay and other "used gear-sites". You are always welcome to to send us your used mics for a check-up and lab test. For a small fee we run them in our lab and send them back with a new frequency curve.

Just last week we performed service on a rare VIP-501 (the image), which is basically a VIP-50 without the filters.

Local fair and handmade guitars

I attended a local fair this weekend in Helsingborg, our hometown. In the booth to our left was an interesting guitar builder, Michael Sandén, who makes acoustic guitars entirely by hand. It is always nice to meet other manufacturers who really care about the details and quality of their products - just like we do.

Sandén guitars recently celebrated 25 years and released a CD with several highly respected guitarists playing Sandén guitars. One of the guitar players was demoing guitars at the fair and I had a word with him. He told me that he used two Milab DC-96B:s for his track on the CD. They were kind enough to give me a copy to take home and listen. It sounds absolutely wonderful.

VIP-50 - a classic Milab

The VIP-50 is arguably the best known mic ever produced by Milab. It was first released in 1985 and became a big success, despite (or maybe thanks to) it's strange appearance. Ray Charles, who called our american distributor himself to order his unit, used it for vocals on at least three albums.

I've been told that Quincy Jones and Bruce Swedien absolutely loved it, which is why it was used for Michael Jackson's voice on the Dangerous album, and on several other Quincy-productions. Chaka Khan, Manhattan Transfer, Michael McDonald and several others also used it, and I read somewhere that Tori Amos used to bring her own VIP-50 to the studio when recording.

The VIP - as we call it - is still in wide use in studios around the world, and for good reasons.

Hand held condensers

There are still many misconceptions about hand held condensers. I challenge anyone who thinks dynamic is the only option for live vocals to try an LSR mic. You'll be blown away.

I read in a big scandinavian music magazine recently that hand held condenser started coming out 6-7 years ago - around 2002 I guess. But it should probably be interpreted as when the "big" companies launched their hand held condenser.

Milab did it 25 years ago. The LC-25 was way ahead of it's time and was (and is) used by many great artists. It's been replaced by the LSR series now, but after 25 years we are still getting requests for it and manufacture it on demand. But the LSR-1000 is pretty much the same construction.

This is a clip from the classic Rod Stewart MTV Unplugged concert in 1993. Rod is using a Milab LSR-2000. And this is almost 10 years before "hand held condensers started coming out"...

Early Michael Ruff. Great hair! Great outfit! Great microphone!

Take a look at this Michael Ruff performance from the 80s. You have to digg that hair and the outfit - and of course the Milab LC-25 mic he is using.

Swedish super drummer Per Lindvall in the background.

Planning for Frankfurt

As you may already know we are exhibiting at Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt in the beginning of April. I'm going together with our R&D manager Per Ove Almeflo and we will share a booth with our excellent german (and swiss) distributor - FBM Audio.

We will bring most of our products along and the spotlight will be on the new BDM-01 - our first dedicated bass drum microphone. But the SRND 360, DC-196, LSR-3000, VM-44 and other models will also be on display.

You will find the Milab/FBM booth in hall 8.0 C05.

Welcome to the Milab corporate blog!

This is the first post for our new corporate blog. My thought has been to create a more informal forum for connecting with customers, potential customers, distributors, partners etc, than the official Milab website, but also to provide information that doesn't quite fit our official news page.

The official Milab Microphones website is here: www.milabmic.com

/Mattias Strömberg