Drums are the foundation of any front-of-house (FOH) mix, presenting engineers the challenge of giving them space in the high-end frequencies that isn’t shrill or piercing, but present and crisp. Therefore, the overhead mics capturing cymbals and drum heads are just as foundational, and Soyuz Microphones designed the 013 series with just this in mind. We were able write up a first impression of these a couple of months back, and now we have them in hand with Josh Fischer, the resident audio engineer at Church of the City Nashville (you know him from his years drumming with Jesus Culture). He sat down with our own Marcel Patillo and shared his excitement about these mics in today’s video.
"...everybody was immediately like, ‘Wow, there's the drums.’" - Josh Fischer, Church of the City, Franklin, Tenn.
“My first impressions of the mics when they came in—they looked fantastic,” Josh says. “They were bright white to be honest, and they came in a very nice packaging, very fun to open and look at, and so we threw 'em up in the overheads on the drums. On the very first Sunday, we used them. A couple of the guys were like, oh man, anytime he got Soyuz on the stage, that's a good day. And just in the ears, when we started soundcheck..., everybody was immediately like, ‘Wow, there's the drums.’ That's what they said. They were like, ‘There's the drums.’ They just came alive out of nowhere.”
The crisp and unobtrusive clarity of the 013’s stood out to Josh. “As soon as we put these mics on, the top end was so clear and so predominant and so pleasing actually. So just cymbals [and] stage volume alone is just going to be a whole lot of 8k, 4k. I don't need to put any of that into the mains [because] I've got plenty of it in the room. What I do need is 12k and above, and a nice pleasing amount of it. As soon as I put those on, man, they just came alive and I had a lot of pleasing clarity that wasn't adding to the harshness of the mix.”
"As soon as I put those on, man, they just came alive..." - Josh Fischer, Church of the City, Franklin, Tenn.
These Soyuz mics are growing on us at Church Production, so please take a few more minutes to sit with Marcel and Josh to learn all that the 013’s brought to Church of the City. You can catch a full rundown and audio samples of the mics here.
