Chris Martin

Mentioned by producer Rik Simpson in this interview from the Universal Audio website, dated shortly after Coldplay's nominations for Viva La Vida & Death and All of His Friends for the 51st Annual Grammy Awards.

Yes actually, in the studio we've got a couple of 6176s. Chris' vocals always go through a 6176. (...) It's generally fairly flat, actually. I just like the sound of it. I don't really pump the EQ too much, maybe shave 2 or 3 dB off, and it just gives a lovely character, a full sound. We actually moved around a fair bit during the last album. We did recordings in Barcelona, New York, and in L.A. Wherever I went, I could always find a 6176 wherever I worked, so could always recall my settings. Chris is very much a perfectionist, he'll always get the basic performance right, but there might be a few words that two or six months later, he wants to re-sing. Obviously, if I can't get the same sound that I had initially, it's going to sound off. So it was always great to be able to find the same equipment, and know that it would sound the same, so close. I could just drop in those few lines, and you'd never be able to tell that it wasn't part of the original performance.

It was also used for Mylo Xyloto, as mentioned in this 2011 UA interview.

We've got about eight 6176 Vintage Channel Strips, which cover everything from bass, vocal, piano. Generally I go through the same mic amps every time for the whole project, so I don't have to repatch stuff and everything is always ready to go.

Mentioned by FOH engineer Dan Green in this AudioTechnology magazine article about the Ghost Stories Tour.

AT: I’m fascinated by your 500 series lunchboxes at front of house. What’s going on there exactly?

DG: Anyone who’s worked on a Midas XL4 will remember how you really only needed to give it some gain and push up the fader and you were good to go. Now with digital consoles — and as happy as I am with the Digico SD7 — you don’t get that, especially on drums.

In my search to rediscover that instant ‘analogue’ sound I began to play around with effects pedal-style boxes, but they were a bit flakey. On the other hand, I’ve always found Radial gear to be super-reliable. When it came out with the 500 series Workhouse, I tried out a few different pres, and settled on eight modules of Neve 1073 (which work really well on Chris’s SM58), four of the Helios Type 69-500 EQs (I love what the Helios high/mids do to the guitars) and four Shadow Hills Mono GAMA mic pres.

If anything does go awry with those, there’s a macro on my SD7 that’ll instantly flick back to the preamps on the SD stage rack.