Morgan ?gren points to sE as number one mic brand

Ågren has played across the globe for a wide range of high profile artists, from Frank Zappa to Steve Vai. Most recently he recorded with musician and producer Bill Laswell, as well as starting his own band, Batterie Deluxe. His awards include Grammys on both sides of the Atlantic, and took top spot in Top Drummer magazine reader poll.

He said: “My drum set is huge. There are three bass drums and lots of other stuff. The drum kit always needs to be mic’d and ready for recording.”

While selecting the correct brand of microphone is clearly an important decision to make, the choice proved to be a simple one for Ågren. “I thought it would be an on-going process, but after trying the sE microphones I soon stopped looking. When I saw them for the first time I could almost see that they sounded good. But the first thing I did was test the sound in my studio, so I put the sE mics up against my old mics and in many cases they sounded so much better that I could not believe it.”

“For overheads I found that the sE4400 was clear and clean but not too sharp,” he continued, “and also never even close to distorting. Cymbals can be hard to record. They tend to eat up a lot, and they can sometimes sound hard, but my cymbals don’t sound hard as the 4400 is the best sounding overhead mic I’ve tried in a long time.”