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ADK Custom Shop creates a multiverse of color options to flatter any and all source material from Hip Hop to Opera, from Heavy Metal to Jazz, Folk to Rock, Pop to Country. Our design team spans three continents and engages the minds and ears of the music industry’s brightest and best. Ray Charles was the inspiration to the ADK Custom Shop Z-Mod, and it required seven years to fulfill this mission. Our goal was to use the vintage mic as the starting-point, not the destination! Do not confuse our products with the typical clone, ADK are Classics Re-Imagined.
Our founder was an Ivy League refugee who decided Music was his life - a Singer-Songwriter who made the rounds of coffee-houses in NYC and Boston in the late 1960’s. While attending Recording School in Boston in 1971, his class did a field trip and spent five nights recording Chick Corea at the Jazz Workshop. So began a quest – to find the best mics, the best pianos, the best guitars possible. After a twenty-year-long relationship with Steinway Pianos culminated in the creation of ADK Microphones, and a single-minded mission to recreate the tone of great vintage mics without the high self-noise and the low dynamic range that plagues the classic valve mics. The ADK Team are Musicians and Recording Engineers, with a mandate to create tools make it easy to create stunning recordings, as well as Sound-Reinforcement Live Mics that captures in a way that flatters each of the highly individual vocalists or specific instruments. Forty-odd years after tracking Chick Corea, ADK 3 Zigma Mics were used to track the Steinway at Jazz at Lincoln Center, with Mr. Corea joining Wynton Marsalis and the JLCO in New York.
Our Bat-Ear Brigade included Chuck Ainlay, Michael Shipley, Terry Howard, Mick Conley and Ronnie Brookshire. What began with Ray Charles was fully realized when Stevie Wonder listened to the Z-Mods at the NAMM Show and said “I’ll take three!” The Quest was worth it!
What sets ADK Apart from other microphone companies is the remarkable way in which we have taken the Art and Science of Sound and used them to create musical “Soul-Mate Mics”!
For half a century, ADK’s Larry Villella has been collecting, and using - pianos, guitars and microphones - continually seeking to find ways of improving the musical experience from each. For going on a quarter century, that passion for euphonic beauty can be heard in every ADK and 3 Zigma Microphone. Affordable Audiophile using the best practices in design and materials.
Most Microphone Companies build a mic line-up based on price and mic type Transformerless or Transformer-Coupled, Solid State or Tube. At ADK Microphones, we start with the mic’s end-purpose. Our Vocal Mics are created in a way to fit the widest range of singers, our voice-over mics are designed to cover everything from AM to FM Radio Broadcasters, men and women. Our Guitar Mics are designed for Steel String, Nylon String, Large-Body, Small Body, Acoustic and Electric. Our Horn mics emphasize different horn types, soprano to contra-bass. ADK is all about Microphone Tone-Color Choices! Think of a crayon-box or an artists palette. Whether you are looking for a Solid-State Microphone, a Tube/Valve Microphone, a Vocal Mic, a Guitar Mic, a Choir and Orchestra Mic, or an Instrument Mic tailor-made for a unique sound, ADK Custom Shop and 3 Zigma Audio have – to quote Pastor Rick Warren – “Purpose-Driven Mics”. If you want a one-size-fits-all, that would be someone else. If you are truly seeking Optimal Solutions for Critical Source-Material, you owe it to your self to check out ADK Mics! Where Good Enough is Never Good Enough! In a world that seems to be racing to the bottom, ADK is swimming against the tide, with a razor-focus on better specs, better tone, better build. Our fifty-year quest can help inform your search for a microphone.
