…is not going to improve your musicianship, your skills as a recording engineer, or for the most part, improve your passion for music.
I’m a gear head. I have had a bad case of Gear Acquisition Syndrome or G.A.S. since I bought my first guitar pedal at Guitar Center when I was a teenager. There was a moment in my life when I gave away and sold off most of it because of an international move. But that period of my life when I had just the bare bones essentials AKA the few pieces of music gear that has a strong sentimental value to me, didn’t last long. After a handful of years I was back at teat of music stores.
Why does this happen to all of us?
I think at the heart of it all is passion for making music, as in the nearly supernatural need to make music… or try to make music… or maybe just think about making music… or maybe just day dream about music. Yeah, that last one, the “wouldn’t it be cool if” of making music. That’s the one that I feel like the G.A.S. comes from. The idea that we could make something amazing… potentially.
I recently was looking at microphones on Reverb.com. I’ve loved microphones since going to school for music recording. The variety, the design, the different results you can get from different kinds. It fascinates me, and makes me curious about every single one of them. That day on Reverb.com I came across a microphone I had not heard of before. The Audio-Technica AT801. Typically when I discover a microphone I don’t know intimately a web search will quickly remedy my ignorance, but that was not the case this time. In fact aside from a few other past sales on Reverb.com with dubious descriptions that didn’t feel accurate. So I went to my usual back-up source of microphone knowledge, RecordingHacks.com.
Recording Hacks has far from a thorough microphone database, but to not say it wasn’t at least substantial and easy to use compared to many other microphone information databases I’ve tried to use in the past. For those things alone I’ve grown to appreciate the site more and more over the years. But alas, there was no record of the Audio-Technica AT801 at Recording Hacks, drat.
So I went to a place I prefer not to find information, although affirming it is fine imho, Youtube.com.
See my issue with Youtube is not that it can’t be a source of accurate information, it’s that typically what drives a channel to succeed on the platform is not being accurate and helpful, it’s abiding by an algorithm. An algorithm that likes to sell ads to companies that want to sell the people that watch the ads goods and services. So when I typed in Audio-Technica AT801 into the search bar, not only did I not get any hits on the specific model of microphone leading me to more information about it. I also received a deluge of videos, at least 75-80% of video titles telling me what I should buy, what mic is better than another, how I need to get a specific piece of gear if I’m going to be taken seriously.
A microphone doesn’t record anything on its own.
Eventually I found an Audio-Technica magazine advertisement from 1977…
I found this on a website called PreservationSound.com which seems to be the personal blog of composer Chris Ruggiero, as well as his efforts to preserve audio history. And sure enough right in the middle of the 5 microphones on display we see this…
The AT801 in all of its glory. An omnidirectional electret condenser microphone, and quite a fashionable one at the. My mind began to swirl with ideas of how I could use such a mic. If I could find 2 of them I could use them as drum overheads. Or maybe as room mics for any number of acoustic instruments. I don’t have many omnidirectional mics in my collection. This would surely be a boon for the collection overall. Oh the possibilities!
Except this mic is not going to improve my musicianship, my skills as a recording engineer, or for the most part, improve my passion for music. At best it will make me a little curious for a short amount of time, or maybe inspire me for a short amount of time. What I really want to do is record something I’m proud of. Or discover something I didn’t know about music. And no amount of new gear is ever going to achieve that on its own.