The TesseracT V snare tone... We were all expecting this to be the most arduous tonequest of the whole project, but it came together in a matter of minutes! Jay set up his main live snare, a DW Stainless Steel 14x6.5” with a fresh Evans Heavyweight batter head, tuned it up and it sounded fantastic! This is where i give away my drum recording discovery of the decade... The Neumann KM 105 is the best snare drum mic ever made. It withstands incredible SPL, has a very tight super-cardiod pattern, the built in high-pass filter cuts any mud, the generous presence peak brings out the snap and the midrange is free of the harsh spikes that many dynamic mics exhibit. I used a pair of KM105’s on the snare in a typic positions and the results were fantastic. Like the kick, these ran into my Trident Series 70 console with some pretty aggressive EQ. Levels were set adhering to the 'one red light good, two red lights bad' rule. The console direct outs were patched to a pair of DBX 160A's set to 2:1, averaging 1–2 db gain reduction and hitting 3-4 on the hardest hits. We carefully adjusted the tuning of the snare to ensure that it’s ring was harmonically sympathetic with the song, something that Acle is particularly passionate about. This require quite some keeping ontop of, especially as Jay hits so incredibly hard and often tracked whole 7 minute takes without stopping. I used nylon LugLoks to keep the tuning as solid as possible and checked against reference samples between takes, but some sag was inevitable. Listen out for the snare dipping in pitch every so slightly across the duration of several of the longer tracks! We replaced the batter head 3 times across the record. We used a DW brass snare on one track and decided it wasn’t as good as the steel, see if you can spot that one! We also used a DW maple snare on the most delicate track for a bit of a softer, more sensitive tone. Photos taken by me on my Fuji X-T2, 56/1, 60/2.4 & 10-24/4 lenses @tesseractband @jaytesseract @middlefarmstudios @dwdrums @neumann.berlin @dbx_pro @tridentaudio #tesseractband #tesseract #album5 #middlefarmstudios #recording #recordingstudio #music #producer #fujifilm