Sound Pure was lucky enough to receive the first pair of Neumann TLM 107 microphones in the United States, so we could put them through their paces, and give Neumann our feedback – and that we did! We tested them thoroughly at Sound Pure Recording Studios, and the entire Sound Pure team came out to give them a new recording challenge...
In our tests the microphones sounded modern, clean, and detailed, but wildly musical – frankly they were gorgeous. Don't hesitate to ask us for our session files so you can hear for your self! And, be sure to watch these videos we created with these microphones in these original sessions.
We worked these large-diaphragm mics on just about everything we could. From vocals, drum overheads, acoustic guitars, clean-tone electric guitars, resonator guitar, voice-over, and even our seven-foot Steinway B Grand Piano their accuracy and transparency held-up across the board. The microphone consistently delivered a smooth, clean, detailed, and entirely musical character, and consistently exceeded our expectations... given their transparency, they were the perfect mic to pair-up with some of our favorite colored preamps, allowing us to add any color we choose to their fundamentally transparent character.
What was perhaps most surprising to us, was the way in which the microphone performed in a “first position” setup. What we mean by this, is that the microphones sounded spectacular across all of these different recordings in the first position we placed them – since we tested them so thoroughly, there's really only one reasonable conclusion – the off-axis neutrality and smoothness made this incredible microphone not only sound great, but great-sounding even when the microphone positioning was imperfect. It's impossible to record as many things as we did, and have them sounding so incredible – and accurate, in the first place that we placed them unless there is something new and special happening off-axis. As long as the tone in the room (of the performer + instrument) was sounding great, these 107's delivered, every time, and in the first place we stuck them. Incredible.
Please see our suite of videos featuring the recordings we made with this “very first pair” that arrived in the USA (which has now been some time ago). Since then, we have purchased our own stereo pair of TLM107's for Sound Pure Recording Studios, and were eager to “put our money where our mouth is.” We are still completely convinced, and really blown-away with the acoustic recording capability of this microphone on any source that is sounding good in the acoustic space where you place it. Detailed, modern, transparent, accurate, but still with that Neumann musicality and polish.
While Neumann has the greatest historic name in microphone building and technology, the particularly clear tone and flat/neutral frequency response of this new Neumann TLM107 makes it a completely modern-tuned Neumann microphone. It's not hyped like most of the modern microphones being created today – instead, it's honest, neutral, and very transparent. Additionally, it is remarkably quiet (low noise), and handles SPL's wonderfully. Even on loud electric guitars the neutral and acoustically accurate representation that the microphone gave us held up as beautifully and naturally as we heard the original source in the room.
That brings us to microphone pre-amplifiers – we tested this gorgeous microphone through a variety of our favorite clean preamps, such as the A Designs Pacifica, as well as some of our Vintage-style preamps, such as our Vintech X73i, and even one of our favorite vacuum tube preamps, the Sebatron Axis, and in each case, the microphone delivered it's clarity and detail to the preamp, allowing the characters of each of those preamps to shine through.
For anyone looking for a technically superior, modern-sounding large-diaphragm microphone, this TLM107 will serve you well for a lifetime of recording. The remarkable build quality that has come to mean Neumann is ever-present in this microphone, and yet they have made new ground with the modern-voicing of this microphone that assures it will be a new-classic of tomorrow. The words “studio workhorse” may have just been redefined.
