Trent Reznor

In the following SOS article, Trent Reznor's engineer said: "The music just flows out of Trent like no one else I've ever known, even though he'll burn brilliantly and then have to play video games for the next eight hours. As with any great artist, there's a lot of procrastination, but while he's playing one of those games his brain is still working and at any moment he could come up with something fantastic. That's why we'd always have to be ready to roll. If he suddenly said, 'I want to sing,' I'd hand him a [Shure] Beta 58 and run it through a Neve and [Universal Audio] LA2A. I had it set up so he could grab a mic, I'd hit two buttons and off we'd go. Most of the time he'd hand-hold a 58, but every once in a while we'd record his vocal with [an AKG] 414 because it captured the natural sound of him in a room, which he really liked. "He recorded 'Closer' with a Beta 58, and for some tracks he'd have it on a mic stand and perform right there in front of the console. In fact, when he did the vocal for 'Ruiner', he was lifting the mic stand, slamming its base into the wood floor and chipping it, while on another occasion he got so carried away that he sheared the knobs off some [Lexicon] PCM42s. There were three PCM42s in a row and he took the feedback and modulation knobs off every one of them. I was thinking, 'Fuck!' However, when he performed, the emotion came out, and in the case of 'Piggy' he was under the console singing into the Beta 58.”

Trent Reznor seen with Blue Microphones "The Mouse" in this music video of How to Destroy Angels.

"I had it set up so he (Trent) could grab a mic, I'd hit two buttons and off we'd go. Most of the time he'd hand-hold a 58, but every once in a while we'd record his vocal with [an AKG] 414 because it captured the natural sound of him in a room, which he really liked.

At 1:05 in the music video for "Head Like A Hole" by Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor can be seen using a Shure SM57 microphone. This video is provided by NineInchNailsVEVO on YouTube.