Road Tests

I don’t know about you, but I have noticed a trend with “affordable” condenser mics sounding “clunky” and requiring a lot of help in the EQ dept. Why bother making it affordable if it sucks? Add that with the reputation for delicacy — especially in some large diaphragm models more suited for the studio — and many of us avoid using them live. But these mics came to me in a very cool quasi-flight-looking case. For the price I was sur-prised AKG made the effort! The mics are very retro studio looking, and are extremely rugged (more on that in a minute).

Presonus has made some great live stuff over the years. I can’t even count the number of their 8-channel comps and gates I have seen in racks. I remember an EQ that had a special secret weapon — a button that killed 60-cycle hum. Loved that. But over the past decade the company has been going more and more in a digital/studio/recording direction and we have had little to talk about in regards to their gear. So when I got the call about the Digimax FS, it was a pleasant surprise.

But the alarm bells went off when he uttered The Phrase. “It was designed for the studio but we are seeing a lot of them used live."