Calrec CM1050C, English version

This Vintage Friday I would like to introduce a lesser known microphone. The Calrec CM1050C.

Calrec was a company from Hebden Bridge, England. At the time they built mixing consoles for use in recording studios. They still do this for the broadcast market. They also designed and made microphones, and they did a pretty good job.

The CM1050C is a condenser microphone with a cardioid polar pattern from the 1970s. This was made as a counterpart to the Neumann KM84 and was actually preferred by many users over the KM84. This microphone was widely used at the BBC and John Bonham was also a well-known user of these microphones.

It is not unlikely that these microphones were used during the recording of Led Zeppelin albums in the technique that Glyn Johns invented, and which became John Bonham’s signature sound.

Glyn Johns was a well-known recording engineer who worked on the albums of The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Who, The Beatles and of course Led Zeppelin.

He came up with a method to make a very good sounding drum recording using 3 microphones. For this setup he used a microphone near the bass drum and two overhead microphones. The first overhead microphone placed about 120 cm  directly above the snare drum and the second placed at the same distance from the snare drum, bur near the floor tom and pointing towards the snare. This gives you a good image of the drum kit where the snare always remaining the center point. Sometimes a fourth microphone is added close to the snare to place it more directly in the mix.

I would be happy to explain exactly how this all technically works, but not in this blog. Just send me a message if you want to know.

Another notable user is John Burton. He’s the engineer who is responsible for the live sound for The Prodigy. He uses this microphone on Leo Crabtree’s drum kit.

Calrec microphones changed its name into Hebden sound. This is basically the same microphone. They have now stopped producing microphones, but I do know that they still carry out repairs on Calrec and Hebden microphones.

I personally own two copies of these Calrec CM1050C microphones, both of which still function very well.

This was Vintage Friday blog for this week. I hope you enjoyed reading it. Feel free to leave a message and don’t hesitate to ask a question.

See you next Vintage Friday!