Top 5: David Bottrill

It’s an older large diaphragm tube mic, sometimes called the Lollipop Mic or the Hitler Mic. The CMV563 with M7S, M8S and M9S capsules, that’s the thing I can’t live without it. I record just about every vocal with it. I even had Maynard from Tool actually hanging on to it with foam, so it wouldn’t shake the valve inside. It’s my No.1 piece of gear, for sure. It’s got a warmth to it. It’s like a U47, but an older version, when Gefell was part of the Neumann company and made them prior to the U47s. It just has that large diaphragm valve sound — warm and full — the way older vocalists like Elvis used to sound. I’ve used other microphones, like Telefunken ELA-M 251s and even the UAD Townsend version of it, but nothing beats the M7S. On any session, we always start with that mic and if it doesn’t work, then I can try something else, but it works 99% of the time.

I do a lot of mixing work and the UAD plug-ins allow me to work easily. I’m an endorsee but I bought a bunch of the plug-ins because I just love them so much, then I get the rest as compensation for promoting the product line. The UAD system is indispensable for me and to not worry when it comes to mix recalls. I would love to have racks and racks of great old analogue gear, but the fact is, there’s no way I could precisely recall a mix, while with the UAD software, I can. It also allows me to work on a variety of projects during the week and be able to switch back and forth quickly and easily. Taking four hours to simply turn the vocals up 1dB, is a thing of the past.

There is this guy from England, Kanwal Dulay, and he builds replica versions of the EH digital 16 pedal. At one point I used them as looper pedals, switching between eight seconds at 8-bit and 16 seconds at 4-bit resolution. They have this beautiful old crunchy sound. Not sure if Kanwal is still making them. I used to build drones and little guitar loops and things like that with it. Sadly, they are out for repair at the moment, so I’m missing them.