Blue Encore 300 Microphone Review: Designed for live work, excels in the studio too!

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Jenee playing fiddle into the Encore 300

If you check out customer comments on the Blue Encore 300 at the online music sites like Musician’s Friend, Sam ash and similar you’ll see over and over that “it’s a great live microphone!” A couple folks sheepishly admit they’ve “tried it on electric guitar in a recording situation with good results” or some similar lukewarm comment.

Political correctness can take a hike, this is one great sounding microphone! Not just for the stage, for studio too!

Aaron, banjo

I own my own studio located in the Nashville area, have years of studio experience and use full time Nashville session players on my sessions. Just today I used the Blue Encore 200 on a fiddle session with Jenee Fleenor (Blake Shelton’s fiddle player). After the session she said, ” I like the sound of this Blue over other mics we’ve used in the past.”

The Blue Encore 300 excels on fiddle! Or should I say, “The Blue Encore 300 can excel on fiddle, depending on the song.” On some songs you may want a soft violin tone and go for a ribbon microphone, others you may want a very aggressive sawing sound and use a large diaphram mix with a hard peak in the upper frequencies. But in general, the Blue delivers a nice round tone that can work on a lot of tunes.

Yesterday I tried the Blue on a rap vocal. It worked great. Tons of presence, and great tone that cut right through the mix.

Other uses that worked out great, male bgv’s, male pop lead vocals and electric guitar.

One notable misfire:

Banjo: The mic’s transient response is not fast enough to track 5 string banjo well.

If you’re having trouble getting good, clean tracks packed with presence or simply need a good work horse studio microphone and can’t afford to pay over $200, I highly recommend the Blue Encore 300.

“But it’s not designed for recording!”

“I couldn’t care less what category some marketing guy in California decides to go with,” I reply, “I’m into results. Good sound is good sound!”