BIG Sound Microphones
Big Sound Microphones is a Nashville manufacturer founded by John Downs. The company created a small line of large-diaphragm vocal microphones. The company’s design intent was to provide a warm, colored, “big” front-end sound especially well-suited to digital recording media.
Big Sound Microphones, 2005
Now that engineers can mix and edit inside a digital recorder, the only place to add color is the front end before they digitize.
The concept of BIG Sound Microphones is to get as much color out of the front end before the AD conversion. The whole concept behind our company is to make the sound BIG or BIG-ER than life. The use of classic tubes and classic transformers and other components, make the even harmonic overtones go on for days. With this circuit running hot, we have chosen to Cryogenically process all major components to give them longer life. Freezing de-stresses all metal components that have stress bends in them, i.e. the tubes and transformers.
Although the Big Sound website was shuttered, John Downs continues to build his vocal microphone designs in Nashville. He combines imported metalwork with his own capsule and circuit designs (inspired by familiar vintage microphones) to produce handcrafted microphones that are well-received by the Nashville audio engineering community.
The company currently produces three models: the BIG, BIG-ER, and Big Lite, with a fourth — the BIG-EST — in the works.
