Home

Microphone Test

 

The Testing Team

Marko & Ruskin Marko Balland :
Marko is mainly a rock harmonica player. His style is aggressive and uses a lot of effects, distorsions and other tools used to trasform the harp sound. For that he needs powerful mics that can restitute the aggressiveness of his playing while maintaining a relatively clean sound.
Marko fronts his own band and he released his first album in early 99 called 'A Donf Experience', where he covered a lot of Hendrix songs. He is currently in the process of finishing his second album, more instrumental and more heavy metal.
Baco & I-Mic Pascal Mikaelian aka Baco :
Pascal plays in several French blues formations and has for years been the harmonica sidekick of French bluesman Patrick Verbeke. His blues is very rootsy, both acoustic and amplified. For the latter he likes microphones that give a real bluesy touch but without being too conventional, since he likes to vary his style. Nowadays he uses an old Turner microphone when he plays amplified. He has released his first album last year in duo with Claude Langlois called  'Le Premier'.
Greg & Green Bullet Greg Szlapczynski :
Greg plays many musical styles but he uses amplified harp essentially in the blues and jazz-rock repertoire. He likes his sound to be fairly gutsy without excessive depth and likes to keep open the possibility of using delays and other effcts on his amplified sound. His second album called Gregtime has been released recently and we review it in the current issue of Planet Harmonica.
Ben & Astatic Benoît Felten :
Editor of Planet Harmonica and amateur harp player, Benoît plays blues, rock and funk for which he uses an amplified sound. His major worry is feedback, which he hates, especially since many mics are guilty of that crime. He hasn't released any official recordings yet, but it may happen one day !
JJ & Beta 56 Jean-Jacques Milteau :
Veteran of the French harmonica scene, Jean-Jacques evolved towards a clean sound these last few years and usually uses vocal mics to amplifiy himself. That being said he does like a crunchy sound once in a while and therefore is open to other mic solutions. He has just released his latest album Bastille Blues which is reviewed in this issue of Planet Harmonica.

 

PhotoFamille.jpg (20365 octets)Family shot :

From left to right:
Greg Szlapczynski, Marco (owner of L'Ampli à Lampes, the shop where the test was held), Marko Balland, Jean-Jacques Milteau, Pascal Mikaelian


Main page of the article Mics description 100% Subjective Build your i-Mic