Over the last 12 months, Lauten Audio has been hard at work pumping out some truly stellar content in its Snare series, all of which has helped showcase the brand’s Snare mic. As the name suggests, Snare mic is a dedicated microphone for your snare drum. Now, Lauten is taking us to the next stage with its newly announced Tom Mic.
The Tom Mic takes a similar approach to the Snare Mic, in that it’s a purpose-designed microphone, and once again, Lauten has opted for a large-diaphragm condenser design to capture all the slap, beef and boom that our rack and floor toms are capable of producing.
The Tom Mic uses a super cardioid polar pattern, offering up to 28dB of off-axis rejection to keep the bleed out, while focusing on the drum you’re pointing it at. As with the Snare Mic, Tom Mic is packing a couple of extra tricks up its sleeve thanks to Lauten’s high and low-pass filter switches.
This pair of three-position filter switches revoice the microphone’s response to accent or attenuate different elements of the toms’ sound, with flat, 140Hz and 80Hz roll-offs on the high-pass, and flat, 5kHz or 12kHz selectable for the low pass filter. Used in combination, you can optimise the Tom mic for different applications, from increased attack, note definition, low end clarity, or even for use as a bottom-head mic.
Tom Mic is a side-address mic, allowing for precise placement at close proximity to your toms without getting in the way of hard-hitting sticks. However, Lauten says it has designed the Tom Mic to live up to inevitable punishment both on the road and in the studio, with a solid brass headframe and mildew-resistant filter to stop dust and debris from getting to the capsule.
“Being a fly on the wall during studio sessions, we learned that big, large diaphragm condenser microphones on Toms are a recording engineer's dream,” says Lauten Audio Founder Brian Loudenslager. “Typically though, they are limited to rooms in the studio with amazing acoustics and are unusable live due to bleed and the fact that they would get in the way of performing.
"We've made that dream possible in any situation. Tom Mic has that sound without the footprint or bleed. The most common feedback is that they're so easy and forgiving to get a good tom sound without any processing.
“Tom Mic is three-plus years in the making, and much thought and effort went into making a microphone with this timbre, this much rejection, and in this size.”
The Lauten Audio Tom Mic is available to order now with a US street price of $398/£349. For more information, or to find your nearest stockist, click here.
