Vintage foley microphones

Question

As mentioned in another thread, I'm working on the sound track of a film which is trying to emulate a vintage, somewhat low-fi feel. The majority of this is most likely going to be accomplished by careful use of compressors, EQ, and plugins such as Izotope Vinyl. However, I was recently struck by the idea that it might be interesting to record foleys and sound effects using vintage equipment as well. I considered using a tape deck, but, as that was expensive, I decided that the microphone itself might be a good place to start.

Does anyone know what equipment the film sound unit of a 70s film might consist of? I looked at one microphone, an Electro-Voice 644 as a possible shotgun mic to record foleys with. Any suggestions? Thanks

Answer 1

You should be careful of your choice of microphones and recording medium here. Although it may be tempting to use all vintage equipment, you may run into problems later such as tape hiss, preamp noise, and general signal-to-noise issues that cannot be easily fixed with modern tools like CEDAR or WNS. A smarter approach would be to record your foley with multiple microphones, some modern and some vintage, and then have the flexibility in post later on. Along the same lines, you could even record to both Pro Tools and an analog tape deck, and then choose later which recording best represents the vision you are trying to achieve.

Answer 2

The standard mic for a long time at our old foley stage was the Neuman m269 looks similar to a U87 but with tubes and a external powersupply. Very nice sounding mics! But with the arrival of dect phones in our studio comPlex they became impossible to use as they picked up a lot of noise. For a long time they got shelved, unfortunatly someone must have seen them and stole them... But they didn't steal the power suPplies... Anyways, those mics were used in Sweden to record foley in the 70's to early 90's.