Frank Sinatra – Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back

In Vol. 4, No. 5 (the September/October 1973 issue) of Recording Engineer / Producer (a.k.a. R-e/p) magazine, an interview with MGM Recording's Ed Greene mentions that Sinatra used the KM-83 for the Magnavox Presents Frank Sinatra TV special, which promoted the album Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back.

R-e/p: How about your choice of microphones?

ED GREENE: The hand microphone that we ended up with was a Neumann KM -83, believe it or not, an omni microphone. I hated to use the word "omni" around people who weren't really technically oriented because right away they said, "Omigod, that'll never work!" But, in fact, it worked very well. We must have tried 15 or 18 microphones and came down to about 5 that we tried on the show. I originally shied away myself from an "omni" just because you have to work it a little closer. But in this case, being the professional that he is, Mr. Sinatra worked it just beautifully. On the segment of the show that required a lavalier we used an electret Sony ECM-50, also an omni, because its sound closely matched the KM-83. The boom mikes, Sennheiser 415's were not used during the live show, but during the video pre-record two days before.

R-e/p: Is the KM-83 the same microphone Mr. Sinatra used on the album?

ED GREENE: No, a U-67 was used on the record, a cardioid used at some distance, about a foot and a half, so that there was really little change of perspective if he moved around a little. But the problem with using a cardioid as a hand mike is that unless you stay on axis, or keep the same angular and distance relationship to it, you're going to have a difference in sound illusion or quality. With an 'omni' you get much less of that. That's one of the reasons for the 'omni'. Also, the KM-83 has no proximity effect; that is, there is no build-up of the low end as you get close to the microphone. So with some careful level riding, it makes a pretty nice sound against the orchestra. It's not a particularly unusual microphone, although once we had chosen it we couldn't find another one in town. So, we had one flown in from New York as a backup. The director didn't like the standard black pop filter, so we used a dull chrome grill from another microphone.

In Vol. 4, No. 5 (the September/October 1973 issue) of Recording Engineer / Producer (a.k.a. R-e/p) magazine, an interview with MGM Recording's Ed Greene mentions that Sinatra used the Sony ECM-50 for part of Magnavox Presents Frank Sinatra, which promoted the album Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back.

The hand microphone that we ended up with was a Neumann KM -83, believe it or not, an omni microphone. I hated to use the word "omni" around people who weren't really technically oriented because right away they said, "Omigod, that'll never work!" But, in fact, it worked very well. We must have tried 15 or 18 microphones and came down to about 5 that we tried on the show. I originally shied away myself from an "omni" just because you have to work it a little closer. But in this case, being the professional that he is, Mr. Sinatra worked it just beautifully. On the segment of the show that required a lavalier we used an electret Sony ECM-50, also an omni, because its sound closely matched the KM-83.

In Vol. 4, No. 5 (the September/October 1973 issue) of Recording Engineer / Producer (a.k.a. R-e/p) magazine, an interview with recording engineer Don MacDougall mentions that Sinatra used a U67 on Ol' Blue Eyes is Back.

Well, all the orchestral and vocal elements were broken down to 14 tracks usually, sometimes 16. I usually keep some tracks open but a couple of times I couldn't. I put Mr. Sinatra in the center of the stage and put a baffle on each side of him, high flats, soft side to him. I used a Neumann U-67 on a boom, and used a Teletronix peak limiter with about 5 dB of limiting, which allowed me to record pretty flat through the system and get rid of all the unwanted extraneous sounds and get some pretty good tracks. The U-67's we used are really classy mikes, they've been rebuilt and they're pretty flat. And we recorded Mr. Sinatra that way, flat, the whole band was actually recorded flat; no equalization, no reverberation, nothing. The natural room acoustics were about, I would say, 3 seconds reverb time, and it lent a marvelous kind of ring to everything.

It was used extensively to record the instruments on Sinatra's albums, as stated in Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording by Charles L. Granata.