Ladies and gentlemen, meet Josephine! She is Ear Trumpet's avant-garde take on a classic microphone design of the ‘30s and ‘40s but uses a modern 26-mm electret condenser capsule and modern J-FET circuitry. Designed for live vocal and ensemble use, Josephine looks the stunning “flapper” with her spherical stainless steel mesh head basket that “floats” oblivious to outside physical forces. But inside of the head basket, a silk and foam pop filter plus shock and vibration damping minimize handling noise.
Josephine only cares about what’s in front of her, so a cardioid polar pattern with good feedback rejection is optimized for distance use by singers or acoustic ensembles. A natural sound is easy to capture from 6 to 48 inches away.
I tried Josephine for vocals, group sings and acoustic guitar recording all at much farther away than I usually record instruments and vocalists. All sounded awesome with a unique and clear presence—the high frequency lift worked well when far from sound sources. I liked the vintage style with the spring suspension and surrounding copper ring along with the stainless steel metal hardware and copper base.
Josephine from Ear Trumpet Labs sells for $599 MSRP and it comes in an all-metal, foam lined traveling case.
eartrumpetlabs.com/products/microphones/josephine
BARRY RUDOLPH is a recording engineer/mixer who
has worked on over 30 gold and platinum records. He has recorded and/or mixed Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Corrs and more. Barry has his own futuristic music mixing facility and loves teaching audio engineering at Musician’s Institute, Hollywood, CA. He is a lifetime Grammy-voting member of NARAS and a contributing editor for Mix Magazine. barryrudolph.com
