Favorite Blue Mic: Kiwi

Members: Cove Reber (vocals), Beau Burchell (guitars) Justin Shekoski (guitars), Chris Sorenson (bass), Alex Rodriguez (drums)

Other Blue Mics: Bottle with B6 Capsule, Mouse, Woodpecker, Blueberry, Dragonfly

Home: Newport Beach, CA

Formed: 2003

Genre: Post-Hardcore

Upcoming Album:
Title TBD
Summer 09' on Virgin Records

Last Album: Saosin (9/26/2006)

Singles:

“You’re Not Alone”
“Voices”

Produced by: Howard Benson

Label: Capitol Records/EMI

Billboard Top Peak Positions:
Rock Chart 7, Billboard 200 Chart 22, Billboard Internet Albums Chart 22 (2006)

EP & Live Albums:

EP The Grey EP (10/14/08)
Live Come Close 3/11/08
EP Saosin (9/6/2005)
EP Translating the Name (6/17/2003)

Singles:

“Bury Your Head” (2005)
"Seven Years" (2003)
"3rd Measurement in C" (2003)

Major Tours:

Warped Tour (2009)
The Used (2008)
Taste of Chaos (2007)
Warped Tour (2006)
Avenged Sevenfold and Coheed and Cambria (2005)
Taste of Chaos (2004)
Warped Tour (2003)

Image Gallery

 

About

Saosin's Beau Burchell writes:

We started tracking the record at Hurley Studios in Costa Mesa, CA. We used Blue's Kiwi outside the kick drum... and man... its awesome... way more usable than the old ns10 trick... it really captures the entire drum and its got a huge extended low end. The room we tracked drums in was pretty much a treated warehouse.... and the Omni Mouse really was able to capture the hugeness of the room along with a royer sf12.

The Kiwi was used as the close drum kit mic. It gave a great overall picture of the kit.. big bottom, smooth present highs. The 2 dragonflys, I used as my main room mics, Stereo XY pattern facing away from the kit.. really captured all the details of the room. When i solo those mics, it sounds exactly the way it did when i was standing in the room... i love these things. ! The woodpeckers were sick on guitars...I also tried the kiwi on some scratch vocals the other day, and i am super anxious to really get in and do some comparisons... but just right off the bat, i really liked what i was hearing straight out of the 1073."

Once again the Blue Kiwi was the winner on bass. Our bass rig was quite elaborate. It was a fender p bass, into the radial injector. split to 4 signals. one was direct into pro tools. The 2nd was into a modded tube screamer, then into an old silver face ampeg svt. into an original ampeg 8x10. Me miced the cab with an ev re20, blue kiwi, and a 421. we ended up scrapping the 421. The re20 seemed to be a little too forward with the guitars... where as the Blue Kiwi sat nicely in the track with bigger and tighter bottom end. The 3rd channel was send to a guitar head and miced with a 57 and the 4th channel was sent to an amp rossed over to only reproduce very low frequencies.

We also did a lot of auxiliary percussion on this record. We were trying to get a super sub sonic low hit.. similar to an 808, but we wanted to track it ourselves... so we ended up tuning down an old ludwig kick drum with the front head off, and micing inside the kick with the Blue Kiwi and hitting it with drum sticks during one of the parts we call our "last of the mowhicans" drum circle part. It sounds thunderous and the Omni Mouse was really able to capture all of the ambience of the room so we didnt have to use any reverb.

During pre production we had tracked some acoustic songs with the blue bottle... and we really liked how it sounded on coves voice.... it has a very large 3d sound... and sits up front in the mix. So when it came time for us to go into the studio with Butch Walker, we brought one with us... Butch really liked the mic. and the vocals on the record are pretty much half and half blue bottle and original u47.

Acoustic guitars sounded amazing with the bottle and an old 414.

We recut about 5 songs with Butch and again we used the Kiwi on bass and kick drum... it sounds huge!!!!

Producer Butch Walker writes: "When doing the new Saosin sessions, we found the Kiwi to surprise us over and over with its low end response on kik drums and bass amps. the Bottle is just one the best mics ever made. Like a reliable U47 on steroids."

My Mic