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i'd like to thank Soundelux...

seaneldon

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seaneldon

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I had a suprise day off of work today, and the session I had scheduled in the studio got switched to Friday, so I was left with 24 hours of completely free time. What did I do with myself, you ask?

 

Easy. I drove two hours to Alto Music in Middletown, NY to see if they had anything new.

 

Not too long ago this particular store became a dealer of Soundelux mics, but they didn't stock any of them. Special order only. Today I went down on a whim and discovered that they had 90% of the Soundelux line sitting in a case.

 

I called my girlfriend and told her to get my credit card and meet me at the store. I figured I'd have made up my mind by the time she arrived.

 

I work at a music store, so I haven't gotten the "kid in a candy store" feeling from seeing gear in a long time. I sell more Universal Audio, Trident, Manley, and Neumann than I can keep in stock. But this was something different. I was particularly ecstatic to check out these mics.

 

I own a U195, U99, and ifet7. I know the magic that Soundelux brings forward. And today my eyes were opened even more.

 

The salesman who I worked with seemed rather "bothered" at first that someone was interested in their most expensive microphones, but I suppose it's because he thought a 20 year old kid with too much facial hair didn't have the cash to drop. After 20 minutes of bothering him, I forced him to set up the ELUX251, e49, and E47 and get me a Gibson Jumbo. We plugged the mics into a Universal Audio 4110 (excuse me while I change my drawers), with all channels set to "Modern" (clean and transparent), and that went into a MOTU HD192. I played about a minute of soft jazz chords and then a minute of louder angry post-teen rocknroll into each mic. Here's the details:

 

ELUX251: This mic has the roundest, fattest bottom end you could possibly listen to without getting annoyed. It's perfect. Midrange is very detailed and soothing. Highs and ambient frequencies are "right there" without sounding artificial, though not quite what an original ELAM would produce. Still, can't find any downfalls to this mic. Priced very well for the quality. I'm impressed.

 

e49: I just bought a real M49 (with a restored power supply, but the mic is 100% factory), so I was ready to be really picky with this one, and I listened to this one more than the other two. The very first thing I noticed was the unbelievably low noise. All that you can hear is music, and not 50 year old electronics. The sound of this mic is, to say the least, larger than the sun, but didn't quite generate what the VF14 in my '49 dishes out. The salesman suggested we place it a bit further back than the others, yet on playback it seemed like I was practically hitting the strings with the mic. The e49 was far more "colored" than the ELUX251, that's for sure. We ended doing a wee-bit of high pass filtering, and all of the sudden the difference between this mic and mine became very subtle. For the price I paid for the Neumann, I could have almost had a pair of these, yet there was a tiny "not QUITE" feeling that kept me from selling off what I already have. Still, incredible microphone in every sense.

 

E47: The very first thing I noticed about this mic was that it seemed slightly heavier than the old U47s I've handled. I didn't really expect that. From what my own ears heard, this was the most "detailed" sounding out of the bunch. We also went back to it a second time on a more saturated setting on the preamp to see how it would react. On the clean "Modern" setting, it was the only mic out of the bunch that picked up my very, VERY light foot tapping during the "jazz playing". The E47 seems to hear more than even my ears do, as I didn't realize I'd been tapping my feet until listening back. The mic is deliciously bright, slightly pushed in the midrange (think an open D chord) yet far from sounding nasal. When I played the same tunes on the more saturated preamp setting, the sound of the mic took a step back and the sound of the guitar and the preamp really took over. Some of the detail was lost, but the $1500 guitar sounded like it took a bath in solid gold. Cool mic, indeed. However, the price tag for this mic seems a TAD too high for my liking. A couple of 90-95% original '47s have sold for about $4500 in my area this year, which is only $500 less than the Soundelux, and I wouldn't have paid tax on the vintage Neumanns (one of which was left completely untouched for 30 years that sold at a Hamptons-area estate sale for $1500. The guy flipped it on eBay the next day for $5k to a Japanese studio). I'll hang onto my ifet7, thanks.

 

So, what'd I get? I recently sold a UA 2-610, 2-1176, and one of my Trident S40s, and Trident hasn't gotten back to me about the Dream console, so I went ahead and scooped up the ELUX251 and put a Universal Audio 4110 on layaway at my store without paying much at all out of pocket. The ELUX251 sounds killer on my own voice (might be the most flattering mic I have for that), but it will be put to the true test in a couple days when it goes next to the M49 for choosing the vocal mic for Friday's session (intimate alto male voices with harmonies on par with the Beach Boys' best).

 

Anyway, the real purpose of this post is for me to give 10 thumbs up to David Bock of Soundelux for making some of the most gorgeous mics I'll ever lay eyes on or listen to. They are instant classics, and will absolutely be just as desired and valuable as the mics that inspired them are today.

 

I'd also like to slash his tires for making me pull out the business credit card 4 times in two years.

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