Sound Network sales rep and ex-Van Morrison sound engineer Walter Samuel asked composer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist Roger Askew to try out the DPA miniature microphones in his home studio. Roger took him at his word and recorded his latest song using nothing but the DPA miniatures. This is what Roger said about the experience:
 
We started out by making the click track. I thought it would be quite good to make the click track out of samples that I'd made with the microphone. I found a loose floorboard and made a kickdrum sound out of that. The amazing thing about the microphone was that they are so small you can just sort of walk around with it, find the sound and just do it. I actually got a different sound by laying the mic on the floor and hitting the floor: it was great! I then bashed on the box the mic came in for one of the backbeat sounds and built up a sample loop like that and ran it within Logic.
 
 
Then we recorded the guitar and double bass at the same time, each of us in a different room. The bass was interesting actually because it didn't seem to matter where you put the mic. We used the clip that came with the mic that attaches it to the strings behind the bridge, either pointing up or pointing down, pointing in or pointing out, and it didn't really matter. They seem to have a very even pick up pattern all round.
Another interesting thing was that because of this even pattern, we didn't have put much compression on the bass. A very, very even sound, really usable and consequently very easy to mix into the track. Olly [the bass player] quite liked the fact that once it was fixed to his bass he didn't have to stand in exactly the same place all day in front of a stand-mounted microphone, he could move around and it didn't change the sound at all. That was good.
 
We used a stick on clip on the guitar, stuck on the scratchplate pointing up across the hole towards the highest string. I tried moving it a bit, but again, it didn't change the sound dramatically. I'd have had to put it round the back of the guitar to get a fundamentally different sound. That was great! The guitar sounded as good as it's ever sounded straight away, that was fantastic. I had to be a bit more careful of hand noise on the body, but once I'd got used to that I really liked the sound; it made it sound like an expensive guitar! I hardly touched the EQ, it was lovely, and with just a little bit of reverb it sounded fantastic!

I did the vocal using a 4066B headset and it was pretty good. I the did a second take by taping the DPA to a normal mic and singing as I'm used to singing into a mic and that's the one I ended up using. It was probably me being so unused to having this thing around my head because the sound was pretty much the same, it was just a better 'take'. I'm sure you'd get used to wearing the headset. Overall I thought the vocal sounded amazing and again, I used less compression than normal. Not that I normally slam compression across everything, but it just didn't seem to need it.
 
For the piano I recorded a concert grand in my mate's house. I tried the Jools Holland approach at first, taping the mic inside and closing the lid. I couldn't get that to work, I mean it was OK but as soon as I opened the lid it sounded better. I just propped the lid up on a couple of videos!
[Editors note: the 'inside the piano' technique is really best suited to live work, where separation is needed from the surrounding instruments.]
 
I finally put an electric guitar onto the track. That was the thing that really surprised me! I got the Telecaster out, plugged it into the amp, and I just hung one of the DPA mics through the strap in front of the speaker. It was absolutely amazing. It sounded exactly like the amplifier. I think of all the years that I've struggled in studios moving amps around and standing them on things, putting SM58s in the back of them and trying to get something in the control room that sounds like the guy down there with his amp cranked up. This just sounded absolutely like the amp, I was completely shocked! When I record guitar amps I'm going to be hanging one of these over the top from now on… Just amazing. It was the sound!
 
The mic didn't need the extremes of some very clever EQ to sort out, it was all pretty much there. Certainly on the acoustic and electric guitars I would consider using them in any situation on those instruments. I think they're incredibly useful. The quality is surprising for the size — for their size they're amazing!