Photo's from the event.
Ben Tompkins began the clinic by introducing himself and Jonny VonRentzell. He then passed the presentation off to Jonny, who started explaining how the company got started. 25 years ago, 2 guys Martin Saulespurens & Skipper Wise (Jazz recorder, largest Mic collection in the world). Met in Amsterdam in 1992. Started working together doing modifications for mics to work with the new way of recording music: DAWs. Saulespurens and Wise shortly thereafter started Blue Microphones (Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics). One of their first big achievements was they and their company created the very first tunable microphone capsules.
After Jonny began going through the different products they offered. He spent a decent amount of time explaining about the different capsule options for the Bottle Rocket Microphone. Each different capsule is modeled after what they called their "Fantasy Microphone Locker." The 9 standard capsules in all. Recently Blue released three more capsules, but all three of these are tuned towards prior Blue microphones: The Blueberry, The Dragonfly, & the Baby Bottle. All the interchangeable capsules are bayonet attachments, and a cool feature is that anyone can put any bayonet capsule on there - not even necessarily a Blue capsule. This works because the tube amp has
Capsule Voltage setting dial instead of a Polar Pattern switch. Jonny followed this by talking about Blue's Signature Microphone Collection. These three microphones are microphones that Blue has designed and tested from the ground up: The Blueberry, The Mouse, & The Dragonfly. Jonny told us that if he was stuck on a desert island, The Dragonfly would be the microphone he took with him to do all his recording.
Another great fact about Blue's microphones is there is a tolerance of 3dB across the board for all microphones within a year build of each other, so no need to buy matched pairs! Their Kiwi Microphone is the only variable polar pattern mic Blue makes. It has 9 options - figure 8 to cardioid to Omni. There are 3 full patterns, but there are steps in-between to give you full control of the sound you want to record.
The Blue Handhelds have active dynamic circuitry, meaning you run 300ft of cable without signal loss. Designed to have consistent sound on most mixers. They torture test their handhelds extensively, a solid steel ring protects the capsule from dropping (or a 7 tonnes truck). Blue Is also diversifying into gaming and computer microphones. Along with that, they design stellar headphones. The high end Ella microphone uses Planar Magnetics to give you the best sound possible.
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