In keeping with the principle that there aren't really many
bad mics around but that some are better at certain things than
others, the Blue Mouse has caused me some real head scratching
in the studio. At over a thousand pounds list it was a seriously
expensive mic and we thought long and hard before investing
but were convinced by the number of positive reviews on the
internet. We have an old Neumann U47fet which still gets put
at the business end of kick drums and we thought that we might
retire it to less arduous work. As soon as the mic arrived we
tried it infront of the kick with a number of other mics and
it was immediately obvious that we would have problems. The
mic is seriously affected by popping and overloaded
every preamp we used until we plugged it into the Focusrite
isa 428 with an industrial standard pop shield. Even then comparing
it to our other test mics it really didn't do it for us as a
kick mic. The top end is very bright and hard and to me the
bottom sounded flabby and confused. Not a good start!.
Doing some more research it turns out that the Mouse comes in
two versions with different output circuitries— transformer
and transformerless. The transformer version is matte black
while the transformerless version that we bought is finished
in a dark royal blue and of course the rave reviews for kick
drum were with the black transformer version. Since then we
have tried the mic out on numerous different sessions and while
it's a good solid quiet mic I've not really found anything that
it does better than our other studio mics though I have recently
spoken to an engineer that uses a pair for drum O/Hs and he
loves them!. As ever it's all down to personal preference but
for me the Blue Mouse is just too expensive for what it does
and if I want that sound then I can always EQ another decent
mic. It's beautifully engineered and not a bad mic per se as
it works well and quietly and of course it looks really great
but for me it's a case of style over performance..
Recently the mic has tumbled in price in the UK coming down
to £600. I don't usually sell mics but I moved mine along
on Ebay and I got £300 from a guy in Italy which is a
decent price for an interesting looking and sounding condenser
mic. And my lesson to me is........ Hire
a microphone for a few days and try it out before buying one.
