RCA 77-DX

Producer Vance Powell - “On Blunderbuss I also used the Neve 33609 and RCA BA6A and an Ampex MX35 four–channel tube mixer to record the drums, but these sessions happened so quickly that I did not have a lot of time to set things up. There was not a lot of upright bass this time, but when there was one, I’d use an RCA 44 and something higher up like the RCA BK5A [cardioid ribbon mic]. There was an African drum on ‘Would You Fight For My Love?’, which had an AEA R92, electric bass would have been DI and a Neumann U67 on the amp, with maybe some compression from the [Fairchild] 670. I recorded Jack’s acoustic guitar with an RCA 77DX, and his electric almost always goes through his 1963 Fender Vibroverb in front of which I placed a U67, which went into the Neve 1073 desk and then straight to tape. I did not record any of Jack’s vocals, other than on the song ‘Just One Drink’ because that was done entirely live. I used a Shure SM57 or 58 on his vocals for that, and Josh recorded the backing vocals.”

Used for vocals on "I'm Gonna Find Another You", as stated by recording engineer Chad Franscoviak in this October 1, 2006 *Mix Online* interview. > For Mayer's vocal chain, Franscoviak says that most of the songs were recorded with a Neumann U47. For a couple of songs, he sang into a Neumann M269c, and on “I'm Gonna Find Another You,” which was recorded at Royal Studios in Memphis, he sang into Al Green's RCA 77 ribbon mic. From there, the chain included a Neve sidecar stocked with 1073 mic pre's and then a UREI silver-face 1176. “On a couple of songs, we did experiment with splitting his vocals into two channels — one of them would be kind of a clean and one of them would be kind of a gritty — and we would take the second channel and put it through a Fairchild 670 and really crush it,” Franscoviak explains. “Then we would either blend it together or choose one or the other for the mix. > “[Mayer] loves hearing his vocals really compressed, so he can be as dynamic as he wants to and it always sounds present to him,” he continues. “He likes way too much reverb when he's tracking, and then when we proceed into the mix, it will be reeled in a little bit. Generally, I will compress lightly going to tape or Pro Tools, and then in Pro Tools cream it with usually the Renaissance Vox.”

Used on Richards' electric guitar for "Brown Sugar", as stated by mix engineer Jimmy Johnson in this September 21, 2018 ProSoundWeb interview. > On the guitar amplifiers, let’s see there were two different ones, on Mick’s I had a SM57, and then on the other I was using… I might have been using an RE15 on Keith. But I had a real problem with Keith because he was running a Fender Twin amp *wide* open, I mean that sucker was getting it. > I had a real problem with distortion going on, but I happened to remember that my maintenance guy, about a month before that, had left me a 20 dB pad that he had made, a homemade pad, so I just stuck it in between. So I dropped that level before it hit the front of the Universal Audio and it saved the day. Otherwise, I would have been hosed. I still thank God for that. I would have just been screwed. So on Keith’s amp… oh no, I remember what was on his amp, an RCA 77DX, because I was having to get that level down any way I could, it was a ribbon mic. > With the pad and that RCA, I made it, just barely. A lot of that had to do with how it sounded, and I was always real pleased with that guitar sound. (...) And the sound of Keith’s guitar is so good, and I really attribute it to that RCA DX77 with the pad, going into that Universal Audio tube console which warmed it up, too. Pretty wild, huh?

Mentioned in this Facebook post by SugarHill Recording Studios. > RCA released the 77 DX in 1954. This gem of a mic has a very dynamic frequency response depending on the angle in which it is positioned. It has recorded countless legends including Al Green, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash and more!! It is still widely used today especially for recording Brass instruments. Come try it for yourself.

Mentioned in this Facebook post by SugarHill Recording Studios. > RCA released the 77 DX in 1954. This gem of a mic has a very dynamic frequency response depending on the angle in which it is positioned. It has recorded countless legends including Al Green, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash and more!! It is still widely used today especially for recording Brass instruments. Come try it for yourself.

Used on the ride cymbal and hi-hats on *Only by the Night*, as stated by producer Jacques King in [this December 2008 *Sound on Sound* interview](https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/inside-track-kings-leon-sex-fire). > "The microphones on the drums changed a lot from song to song. On the kick it could be a Beta 52, sometimes it was an RE20, or a [Sennheiser] 421, or a [Neumann] FET 47, or an NS10 [i.e. the driver from a Yamaha NS10 monitor used as a mic], or a combination. It depends on what I was trying to achieve. The mics were usually in front of the kick, or just barely inside. On one song, 'Crawl', I did put a U87 on the batter side of the kick, next to the pedal, which gives a very attack-orientated sound, with a Led Zeppelin-ish quality. On 'Sex On Fire' I used the 52, FET 47 and NS10 on the kick. I had all the kick mics on a Neve BCM10 sidecar and I'd submix them and run them through a GML EQ and then to one track on the tape. I didn't want to keep them separate. It was a matter of get the sound, make the decision, and move on. > "The snare was recorded in similar fashion to the kick. I had the option of various mics that all went through a BCM10 and were submixed, through a GML 580 EQ, then a [Empirical Labs] Distressor, just to give it some control and make sure the snare hit the tape at the right level. On the track sheet a transformerless Shure SM57 is indicated. It was something I read about a couple of years ago, and it's a really good thing. It gives a nicer, more transparent, usable sound that requires less EQ. You lose a bit of level, but typically the things that you record with a 57 are so loud anyway that it doesn't matter. So I asked the people at Blackbird to take the transformer out of one of their 57s and they were gracious enough to do this. After recording I also ran the snare and kick through an Eventide DSP4000 on a Big Muff setting, and recorded that in Pro Tools during the transfer to the computer. > "The toms were recorded with three Josephson E22S mics, which are a modern type, and they're fantastic on the toms. There were a rack of toms plus two floor toms, and I also submixed the tom mics via a BCM10 to a stereo pair, panning the toms as was appropriate for the track. The overheads were recorded with a Telefunken Elam 251 going through a Neve 1081 preamp/EQ, then an Urei 1176, and then to tape. The ride cymbal and the hi-hat were recorded with RCA77 ribbon mics, the ones that David Letterman used to have on his show. When I use a mono overhead, as I did in this case, I like using ribbons, for a good stereo spread between ride and cymbal. > "I had half a dozen mics up for the room sound: a Neumann U67, M49, AKG C12, RCA 44, and/or a Royer SF12 in the echo chamber. I'd leave the door to the echo chamber open so the sound of the drums was happening in there as well, and I'd move the room mics around to get the sound that I wanted for a particular song. I would then bus different combinations to the two room tracks, depending on the song. In the case of 'Sex On Fire' I used a U67 and an RCA 44 for Room 1, and an RCA4 4 and an SF12 for Room 2. Some of these mics went through Neve preamps, some through an old RCA tube mic that Blackbird customised. The combination of room mics was bussed through a Fairchild 670." Both a 77-B and a 77-DX are on [the ribbon micrcophone list for Blackbird Studios](https://www.blackbirdaudiorentals.com/ribbon-mics), where *Only by the Night* was recorded. Yet, according to [part 1 of the Letterman FAQ page](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/letterman/faq/part1/), Letterman's microphone was a 77-DX. > Yes, the microphone (an old RCA DX 77) does work, but is usually reserved for special occasions, such as when Dave is "playing along with the band" by hitting it with a pencil. The crew at NBC gave him the mic when he left. Dave's primary mic is the wireless "tie-clip" variety. There was a report that Dave's mike was stolen off his desk during the renovation of the Ed Sullivan Theater in the spring of 1996, but I can tell no difference in the replacement.

Used for vocals on *The Heart of Saturday Night*, *Small Changes*, *Foreign Affairs*, *Blue Valentine* and *Heartattack and Vine*, as stated by producer "Bones" Howe in this February 2004 *Sound on Sound* interview. It is visible in "[Bones Howe's layout diagrams for the Foreign Affairs sessions at Wally Heider Studio 4, showing the layout for the jazz band recordings](https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/styles/header/s3/imagelibrary/b/boneshowed2-wqTetGFKG4CtypiSfhHbijWOAZR1mvE0.jpg)" and the "[[d]iagram for the Foreign Affairs sessions at Wally Heider Studio 4 showing the layout used for the orchestral track recordings](https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/styles/header/s3/imagelibrary/b/boneshowed3-3xwRYyxN4rwhJHkeuPexC6CxDJDTPpbF.jpg)" from the same interview. > Tom Waits's voice itself is a unique instrument. For that, Howe went back to his old standby, the classic RCA 77 DX ribbon mic. "The 77s have three cardioid settings," he explains. "V1 and V2 were different low-end cutoffs, and 'M' was for music recording. The V1 setting had a high cutoff, which made it good for radio announcing; the V2 position left a lot more low end in there and made it a great vocal microphone." The signal ran through a UREI 1176 compressor/limiter set with what Howe swears are the best parameter settings that can be configured on it for vocals: threshold/attack at 6, release at 7, and a 12:1 compression ratio. "Tom popped and spat a lot when he sang, so the 77 was perfect, because it's very hard to pop that microphone, so you didn't need a pop filter. Plus he liked to get right on the mic, so he would sit at the piano and I hung it from a boom so it would hang down in front of him. On some tracks we'd set it up directly in front of the band and he's stand in front of the drums and sing. On 'Step Right Up' you can almost hear him flipping pages of lyrics. He was always surrounded by the music and the records sound like it. We never used headphones. Never." In [this interview](https://tapeop.com/interviews/64/bones-howe/) from the March/April 2008 issue of *Tape Op* Magazine, Howe stated the following, which affirms the use of the 77-DX on Waits' recordings. > My favorite mic was the [RCA] 77-DX, and I used it for vocals on everything I did. Years later I tried to find those mics and only a couple of people had them. They wanted a lot of money to rent them. Ribbon mics were amazing for brass, saxophone and vocals.

this item can be seen at 1:13

“My mic pres are… let me walk to my rack and shine a light so I can have a look… I have API 500-series mic pres, and two Neve 1073LBs and my two overhead and two kick mics go through my four Helios Type 69s. The overheads then go through a Manley Vari Mu limiter/compressor, and I have another Altec 1567a mixer which I send my two snare mics through before they go through a Urei 1176. I also use a distant Beyerdynamic ribbon mic on the drums, which goes through a Standard Audio Level-Or, and an important part of the drum sound on Sia’s record came from an **RCA 77 ribbon**, placed just in front of the kick."

Mentioned in this Facebook post by SugarHill Recording Studios. > RCA released the 77 DX in 1954. This gem of a mic has a very dynamic frequency response depending on the angle in which it is positioned. It has recorded countless legends including Al Green, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash and more!! It is still widely used today especially for recording Brass instruments. Come try it for yourself.

Used on *No Better Than This*, as stated in this August 16, 2010 *Bloomington Herald Times* article archived on Mellencamp's official website. > He’s never realized that ambition more than with “No Better Than This,” his 25th album. It’s 13 songs written and recorded over 13 days on a 55-year-old Ampex tape recorder using one classic RCA 77 DX microphone. The songs were all laid down on the road during off-days on his 2009 tour of minor league ballparks and off-the-beaten-path venues with compatriots Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. It is also mentioned in [this August 17, 2010 Music Angle (now Analog Planet) article](https://www.mellencamp.com/news.html?n_id=898), also archived on Mellencamp's official website. > Equipped with John Mellencamp's then recently acquired vintage 1/4" reel-to-reel 1955 Ampex 601 mono tape recorder and a pair of iconic 50's era RCA ribbon microphones ( a 77 DX and 44 used singly) presumably supplied by producer T-Bone Burnett, the duo, accompanied by Mellencamp's wife Elaine, who shot the album's cover photo, hit the road during a break in last summer's Bob Dylan-John Mellencamp-Willie Nelson tour to record thirteen freshly penned songs Mr. Mellencamp had written over thirteen prolific days.

I also have an old RCA ribbon mic that I like to throw out of phase intentionally with the Sennheiser.

This mic was used to record the whole of "Gon' Boogaloo", according to the album's liner notes.

Used for Higgins' hi-hat and snare on Ornette Coleman's *The Shape of Jazz to Come* and *Change of the Century*, as recounted by sound engineer "Bones" Howe in this February 2004 *Sound on Sound* interview (the DX is specified later in the article when Tom Waits is discussed). > "I set them up in a square, one in each corner of an imaginary room in the studio, close together, all facing the centre of the square. I had set up the microphones before they got there: I had an RCA 77 on Ornette's alto sax — the white plastic one he was notorious for playing — and a 77 on Don Cherry's pocket trumpet, a Telefunken U47 on Charlie's bass, and the drums were miked with a U47 as an overhead and a 77 over the hat and snare. We were recording live to mono and two-track at the same time. I liked this setup so much that I made sure I wrote it down, and I still have that setup sheet to this day. I would use it to record a lot of albums."

Visible in this photo of Bradley, the music video for "The World (Is Going Up In Flames)" [at 1:25](https://youtu.be/moiUyFQQE-0?t=85) and [at 2:40](https://youtu.be/moiUyFQQE-0?t=160) and the music video for "Heartaches and Pain" [starting at 1:04](https://youtu.be/7BEFY1SfQZI?t=64). It is most likely the one at Daptone Records' recording studios, which was mentioned by producer Gabriel Roth in [this June 2008 *Sound on Sound* article](https://www.soundonsound.com/people/gabriel-roth-recording-daptone-records). > "There's an old–school feel to the studio, but it's by no means some kind of vintage museum," Roth states. In fact, the gear list is as much serendipitous as it is calculated: there's a newish Rode NT1A large–diaphragm condenser mic, a classic RCA DX77, and an assortment of cheap Radio Shack microphones cohabitating in the mic closet, while an Ampeg Gemini guitar amp made its way to the studio when it literally bumped into Roth as it was being tossed out into a dumpster near a building renovation.

> Mentioned in this October 11, 2016 *Electronic Musician* article. These days he uses three mics on the drums, which, most people would still think of as a pretty minimalist setup. “We usually have an RCA 77DX or an Altec 639 pretty far overhead,” he says. “About three feet or so above the kit, kind of going for a Motown type of sound. And then a kick and a snare mic. We have a small ribbon mic that we put on the kick. It’s an Altec, like the little brother to the 639B, the 671B. We call it the “Mini Bird Cage.” We don’t put it right in front of the kick, but we’ll put it in that spot off to the side of the kick where you might get a little from the bottom of the snare drum and an indirect kick drum sound. Then also an overhead, and a mic pretty much on the snare drum—on top, to blend in, kind of facing away from the hi-hat, just facing the snare, and trying to only get the crack from the snare. And the cymbals and tom toms are kind of in focus because of the overhead, and we have control over the kick and snare.”

Visible in this [ca. 1955](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-rock-and-roll-singer-bill-haley-at-a-microphone-news-photo/155464562) this photo of Haley. > American rock and roll singer Bill Haley (1925 - 1981), at a microphone, circa 1955. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

Used for Coleman's alto saxophone for *The Shape of Jazz to Come* and *Change of the Century*, as recounted by sound engineer "Bones" Howe in this February 2004 *Sound on Sound* interview (the DX is specified later in the article when Tom Waits is discussed). > "I set them up in a square, one in each corner of an imaginary room in the studio, close together, all facing the centre of the square. I had set up the microphones before they got there: I had an RCA 77 on Ornette's alto sax — the white plastic one he was notorious for playing — and a 77 on Don Cherry's pocket trumpet, a Telefunken U47 on Charlie's bass, and the drums were miked with a U47 as an overhead and a 77 over the hat and snare. We were recording live to mono and two-track at the same time. I liked this setup so much that I made sure I wrote it down, and I still have that setup sheet to this day. I would use it to record a lot of albums."

Used for Cherry's pocket trumpet Ornette Coleman's *The Shape of Jazz to Come* and *Change of the Century*, as recounted by sound engineer "Bones" Howe in this February 2004 *Sound on Sound* interview (the DX is specified later in the article when Tom Waits is discussed). > "I set them up in a square, one in each corner of an imaginary room in the studio, close together, all facing the centre of the square. I had set up the microphones before they got there: I had an RCA 77 on Ornette's alto sax — the white plastic one he was notorious for playing — and a 77 on Don Cherry's pocket trumpet, a Telefunken U47 on Charlie's bass, and the drums were miked with a U47 as an overhead and a 77 over the hat and snare. We were recording live to mono and two-track at the same time. I liked this setup so much that I made sure I wrote it down, and I still have that setup sheet to this day. I would use it to record a lot of albums."

Mentioned in this Facebook post by SugarHill Recording Studios. > RCA released the 77 DX in 1954. This gem of a mic has a very dynamic frequency response depending on the angle in which it is positioned. It has recorded countless legends including Al Green, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash and more!! It is still widely used today especially for recording Brass instruments. Come try it for yourself.

Visible in this photo of Carmichael.