Yesterday I had a lovely job in the Forest of Dean recording a piece about the Dawn Chorus. As well as having a trusty Sennheiser 816 on hand it also seemed like the perfect opportunity to test out the parabolic reflector I have been getting set up over the last couple of weeks. The reflector was rescued from a loft a fair while ago and I recently dusted it off to try out with a few of the mics I had around the place. Nothing I had was suitable for the original microphone bracket that was attached to the dish so the process included the slightly scary procedure of drilling a hole in the dish to provide a new mounting point for a small Rycote suspension.
After a few trips to my own loft for some long forgotton microphone suspension parts and one trip to B&Q – mainly for rubber washers from the plumbing section the new version of the reflector was born.
The reflector currently contains a Scheops CCM41 mic, it’s a hyper cardioid, but I’ve always thought of it as a bit wider than the shotgun mics I’m used to using for most of my work so I thought it was worth a go. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the results, so here are a few recordings from the Forest of Dean by way of example. Next though will be to try it out with a cardioid or an omni mic.
I also found an illustration of my original dish from an old book on Wildlife recording, You can still buy an almost identical dish today..
One response
I recently filmed in the Forest of Dean, such a lovely part of the world. Although I didn’t have the opportunity to record the wildlife as we were making a observational documentary about a church plant based there. Do you do much wildlife recording? This isn’t something I’m familiar with…