I went into Manhattan last Thursday for a tone adjustment session with sax great David Mann ( http://www.davidmann.net/bio.html ) at Roberto Romeo's famed center-of-the-sax-universe "Roberto's Winds" ( http://www.robertoswoodwind.com/ ). This is located midtown near 46th and 7th, near Madison Square Garden and not far from Central Park, right in the middle of what's-happening.

I am in the process of preparing some better tone presets and, through the advice of our friend David Gage ( http://davidgage.com/index.php ), I contacted Roberto. It seems that Roberto's shop is a beehive of activity for many of New York's upper-echelon players. Once he heard what I was up to and learned more about our L1 sound system and how it will empower an amplified sax player, he was highly enthusiastic and recommended David Mann as an ideal tester and participant. So, Roberto made his larger rehearsal space available to David and I for the session. I am impressed with the generosity of both men for the use of the facilities and time. Bill Becker from our engineering group, himself an experienced and active trombone player, came with to help and learn. So did I.

The goal for the session was to create a complete amplified musical instrument consisting of the instrument itself, a pickup system, our L1 system and the tone-shaping "preset" which is the real "glue". The goal for the preset was to simply acheive the amplified tone David wanted to hear if he were to do a live show with our system. He brought his own standard mic system (ATM) and Roberto contributed an "SD Systems" mic (LC89), intended specifically for sax use. We also used one of Roberto's standard SM58's, which is often encountered on a pro stage. David brought tenor, alto and soprano instruments for the tests and we did tone shaping for all.

We worked very efficiently. This was helped immensely by David's knowledge and experience in what he thought would be the tone he wanted to hear in the air. He was very happy with everything he heard and said the system sounds "amazing", looking forward to taking it out to some shows when we get it all loaded with new presets.

I was amazed how similar miking a sax bell is to miking an electric guitar amp: The sound is all concentrated in the upper midrange and is excessively bright compared to the tone you hear from the instrument while it's played in the room. And so, we often had to roll off the high end for bell-miking to acheive a natural tone. We also did a small amount of warming the tone up with mild and gradual upper bass (150-300 Hz). We made a huge improvement in the sm58 tone with high end reduction and a nasty "ack" 3-4KHz. All in all, it was very productive and a whole lot of fun. Bill and I also enjoyed hearing David matter-of-factly be the great player he is.

These tone settings will eventually show up on new presets sometime in the future. Meanwhile, we left a complete system at Roberto's big studio and will burn these presets in as soon as we can, probably in a few weeks. So, any of you sax players in the city might want to go check it out sometime. Those with no fear of uploading a custom preset series into your PS1 could do so when they're available.

I'll add some innerestin fotoz. I have to do one at a time. The first one is David with the mics we used, his ATM on the horn and the SD along with the remote control for the system on the seat, along with the preamp/processor boxes for the mics.

David Gage showed up for the session, braving the traffic on his bike. Left to right are David Mann, Roberto and D Gage complete with helmet.

Here's how David Mann mics his soprano. The tone sounds just like the instrument in the room this way, once we got the EQ right. His normal setup for soprano puts the clip-on ATM mic in the same spot. The only drawback to this method is more variable note-to-note level variations. With the mic in the bell, we had to do such crazy EQ that we gave up.

Here's part of Roberto's shop. (Oh yeah, give me one of each of those Selmer MkVI's). Actually, Roberto sells his own brand of sax, some of which are shown. The shop is very high end and very tools-of-the-trade as well.

I looked all this over and thought you might like to see how the SD attaches to the bell, with 3 springy legs. This mic required the least amount of EQ and on the tenor and alto, it was fine flat. There was a very odd "tone" knob on the processor box. We turned this to full clockwise rotation, thinking it meant "fullest tone", which is what we heard. Adding EQ helped, tho, and we also did some nice high-passing. David played the lowest note on the instrument and I dialed in a 3rd order (18dB/oct) highpass on the equalizer that made minimum impact on the lowest-note tone. The tenor was around 50Hz and the alto was around 120. Highpass is always useful if you can use it as it prevents deep bass signals from lower-frequency instruments from being rebroadcast.

Hi Cliff,
What a cool place! I would never be able to leave! Let us know when the presets are done. Is the mic in the first picture with the small gooseneck an "AMT" (Applied Microphone Technologies) mic? You were referring to it as an "ATM". It looks like the same thing. They are very bright. We have several of these and I haven't found a preset that gets us to that ultimate tone yet.
I'm looking forward to see what you come up with!

Can't wait to load & hear the new "sax" pre-sets....good going!

Hi Cliff,

I just noticed your post (haven't checked the forum for awhile) Thanks for taking care of us sax players. I'm curious, between the AMT and the SD Systems mics, which one sounded better in your opinion and required less "tweaking" to achieve an optimum sound? Also, when will the presets be available?

Thanks!

Jack
www.jackprybylski.com
www.myspace.com/jackprybylski

Here are a couple more veteran sax players who are very interested in the sax presets. They lead The Emeralds (www.theemeralds.net) from Edmonton, Alberta and have just released their 29th CD/album.
Wally Petruk and Allan Broder (along with Doc, Terry and Don) have just purchased a couple of L1 systems (with four B1's) and can't wait to fine tune their sound even further.
You can make out their new speaker system behind them on stage.
What's up with the presets?

quote:

Originally posted by Bose Guy in Calgary:

What's up with the presets?

I second that emotion......it's been quite awhile.

Gotta third this one.

It would be very useful to have some sax presets, not only for clip-ons but also for other mikes as well. I noticed there is a T1 preset for RE20 & bone, but not one for RE20 & sax!

I know there are lots more guitar & vocalists using this system, but if you give the horn players some more luv they might more easily see it's beauty.

quote:

Originally posted by Cliff-at-Bose:
Here's how David Mann mics his soprano. The tone sounds just like the instrument in the room this way, once we got the EQ right. His normal setup for soprano puts the clip-on ATM mic in the same spot. The only drawback to this method is more variable note-to-note level variations. With the mic in the bell, we had to do such crazy EQ that we gave up.

Yeah, micing a soprano is always a trip, which is why using two is recommended, altho not very practical for most of us. With set mics, I just have to "work it", cause there are times when having it facing the bell is what is needed for specific tones, & if you need to cut. Using it above, as pictured, can often be (as w/acoustic guitar micing) too feedback prone, for getting enough volume on that mellower tone above the horn (& high end required), if you're in a high-volume setting, is "risky behavior"....

This is one reason I'll often use my Saxello, the curved up bell means the mic is both facing the bell, AND the above-horn area, so I have little trouble with feedback...

And some new pre-sets, taking into account whatever filtering is required to tame the highs, while tempering the lows too, would be greatly appreciated, by we of the horns....

The typical "cut back some of the highs" when a mic is feeding back, will only work to a certain point. I've found that if I cut them down too much, I then must cut the lows down as well (or it sounds muddy), and if much of the highs and lows are cut, you then lose all the "meat" of the tone.

For playing an instrument so universally loved by audiences, we do find ourselves victims of occasional "sax discrimination" in the world of musical equipment. Since we are smaller in numbers than rhythm section players, we, like Mac-men in a PC World, tend to get less attention....

But really guys, you must know that life on stage with a sax player hearing himself, and liking what he hears tone-wise, is a far better existence than the alternative.....

The placement problems that you address and the reason for you to use your saxello is why I went to using a curved soprano. I played a strait horn for so long and had the same identical problems with tone changes and dual mic-ing and it was ALL eliminated by using a clipon on a curved sop. I just use the same placement as the alto tenor and bari with the mic pointing towards the left hand. There will be some folks that think the change in tone to the curved soprano is too much and will continue to use the other but for my purposes, it took care of the problem.
My 2 cents......

I'll fourth that. Been waiting with baited breath for the AMT presets. Maybe they will be on the T-1 that Ken brings to St. Louis!