Mic Shootout: Neat King Bee, Neat Worker Bee, Blue Spark, Blue Baby Bottle by zZounds

We recorded electric guitar amp and vocals on 4 microphones: the Blue Baby Bottle, Blue Spark (in Focus mode), Neat King Bee, and Neat Worker Bee. Download all 4 tracks to compare them all back to back!

Here's what you're hearing:
Electric guitars through EVH 5150 III guitar amp head + 5150 III 2x12 cabinet:
0:00 - 1:00 Paul Reed Smith S2 Custom 24
1:00 - 2:00 Gibson Les Paul Classic
2:00 - 3:00 Paul Reed Smith S2 Vela

Vocals with no processing:
3:00 - 3:32 Female vocals
3:32 - 4:08 Male vocals
4:08 - 4:36 Male voiceover

We used the 4 mic preamps on a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 interface feeding Pro Tools at 48 kHz/24-bit resolution.

For the sung vocals, we added each microphone's custom pop filter; for the VO recording, we tried one large metal pop filter in front of all 4 mics spaced as closely as possible.

For each recording, we adjusted the Scarlett's gain knobs so our levels were roughly even on all four channels. We found that the Worker Bee and Spark required a bit more gain to capture the same levels as the King Bee and Baby Bottle, with the Spark requiring the most gain and the Baby Bottle requiring the least gain.

Contains tracks

• Neat Worker Bee by zZounds
• Neat King Bee by zZounds
• Blue Spark by zZounds
• Blue Baby Bottle by zZounds