well, I once heard you only get 3 good loves in your life. I think I used up two of em. The first Love was Nadia in my sophmore year of Highschool, then there was Cam, not too long before that, during that, and after that (you hotta watch that "old friend" boy!!) and lately it's been MXL990. She was sexy as all hell with a mean pit-bull stance on the mic stand. She knew how to make me feel good and how to sometimes blind me about the bad things I didn't want to hear. Covered it all up and changed it all around and all in ways I liked. A lot. A whole lot. But there was always something I wanted that I just couldn't get from 990. Enter: MXL 9000.

That 1980's robot-of-the-future name was the name given to a re-badging and re-manufacturer of one of MXLs older mics, the MXL76t which in it self was a remaking of a prior mic but by different parts manufacturers. this mic, wow, the body out of it (it's a tube mic) is way stronger thna the MXL. And that's what I REALLY wanted inorder ot make my voice stand out more and seem more real and in person. This mic's got it. It also has something I didn't know I wanted, but quickly admired - more clarity. More clarity in the mids, the lows and the highs. there's less color on the vocals and I had to readjust all my pre-sets jsut for the 9000. But it's all worth it and as I keep working with it, I get a good idea ogf what it's liek to work with a mic above entry-level status.

Initially it was tough to hear a difference, but the more I tune on it and play with it, the more it shows me it did in the recording. It eliminates that 'film' the 990 feels liek it has over it. It eliminated that tinny sound that the 990 generates closer to clip. There's less operating noise than the 990 which also makes this mic pick up more other-wise unnoticible sounds. Like I can now hear the fan on my computer when I'm recording, someone else in the room writing and mouthing their lines, things outside, etc. It's the first mic I've had to use a noise gate on and its' pretty high up. These are all good traits of course because they come with lots of benefits. For starters, the 9000 pics up more of the body of my voice. I sound more liek I'm inside the speakers, or close to you as you listen to the song, and the 9000 is what gives me that intimacy. It picks up a lot more of hte subtleties of my voice and gives it a new color that I didn't know it had on them mic and it also allowed me to do a LOT of tracks I couldn't before because my focals rolled off the track and sounded either muddy, or jsut flat out indescernable. That opens up my creativity a ton in it self since tracks in that range made up about 1/3rd of the tracks I wrote, and now I can record them. It's ironic, because it's really similar to the freedom I felt after putting down my radioshack mic in place for the 990. It brought out another aspect in my voice to make use of, which is, notes and tones other than just shades of bass. Before, my vocals always jsut sounded like a guy with a bassy voice performing. Now you can hear way more differences and inflections of my voice so I sound more like a real hpysical person with a real physical body, instead of an all-or-none carichiture of my self. Also, the chorus effect on my adlibs happens virtually instantaneously and locks up much longer now than it had with the prior mics. Things liek this got my curiosity up and also grew my relationship and acceptance of this mic. I even asked it "Hey, how do you make that chorus effect happen so much faster, clearer, and cleaner?" and she replied "That's because my diapghragm responds really fast" and that's about when I just melted. I love this mic and if I only get three loves in my life time, I'm already over the limit by one. I hope there's room for jsut one more.


- D

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