CK-1 : Great mics only now get your acoustic environment fixed!

I first bought one CK-1 to test. I found the results slightly disappointing until it occurred to me that my home studio acoustical environment might be the cause of the harshness. Although basicly pretty good as normal rooms go I improved it by building a pair of acoustic panels which can be moved around and the height is also adjustable. They are currently carpet clad while I await some acoustic material on it's way from Germany.

The result was an incredible improvement with the panels angled behind the mic to kill any off axis reflections from the rear. The mic sounded transparent and alive, even before any equalization or effects. I did use my UA LA610 Mk II as pre with very mild compression - about 3db.

So I ordered the second mic and it came today. I don't have a second LA610 so I used my simple old ART dual tube MP and the result was beyond incredible!

With input and output pre levels around half and about 1/3 gain on line input of my Focusrite 18i20 one microphone towards 12th fret and one towards the bridge the sound is what I can only describe as holographic and having a natural chorus (or choral) sound when panned as a stereo pair, again without any eq or effects seeming to be needed.

I'll be trying on recording my violin soon which will be a very different test and I'll post the result later. In any case I heartily recommend these mics as great value only do make yourself some acoustic screens as I did and you'll not regret that either!.