ADK Microphones is the culmination of two parallel fifty-year collections of microphones and guitars. Our founder started playing guitar at a young age and added to his own father’s collection, creating a wide variety of guitars, from arch-top to 12-string, from nylon strings to dreadnaughts. Since all of these various frets have a different tone-profiles, it made sense to create guitar-specific microphones to best achieve optimal recording results for various type of instruments, rejecting the one-size-fits-all concept.

We immediately made friends with our kindred-spirits in Nashville, starting with Mick Conley (Marty Stuart, Kathy Mattea).  Mick is both a musician and engineer and gave us great insights into the needs of Nashville’s premier guitarists. When it came time to record Marty Stuart’s Million-Dollar pre-war Martin D-45, Mick called on ADK to track this magnificent instrument, which had previously belonged to Hank Williams, Sr and Johnny Cash.  They selected a 3Zigma C-Lol-12 TL to record larger-body rosewood guitars because Dreadnaught Martin tend toward being “Boomy” or Bass-Heavy.  Having a Brilliant Mic like a C-12 Reference balances the tone.  Having a HPF as the C-Lol-12 FX does, can also help tame bass-proximity boost. In contrast, Marty and Mick chose the C-Lol-67 TL for smaller-body mahogany fingerstyle guitars. We make it easy to pair Mics & Sources by offering a Palette of Sonic Paintbrushes. Fit the tool to the task by ‘tone-matching’. 

Notice the unique downward-facing mic technique used on Marty in this picture.  The old adage is to throw the book away, put the headphones on to find the sweet-spot – however counter-intuitive a placement.