Obie O’Brien is most well known for his work with Jon Bon Jovi, but also for his extraordinary productions of Barbra Streisand, The Nighthawks, Alice Cooper, The Marvelettes, Cole Redding and many more. Austrian Audio sat down with Obie in his studio in Nottingham, PA, to talk about microphones, headphones and more.
Obie first experienced the Austrian Audio OC818 Large-Diaphragm Condenser Microphone when visiting Vienna while on tour with Bon Jovi in 2019. “Here’s the deal with microphones,” Obie explains. “There’s a lot of people making microphones today and they work great for one or two things. But they don’t work great for everything.” When Obie learned more about the OC818, he was immediately taken with it- especially with the OC818’s ceramic capsule body: “The great thing about that is, it’s unaffected by moisture or heat temperature variations. Why doesn’t everybody do that?”
When Obie received his own OC818, he used it on virtually everything: on the Hammond B3, on the Leslie, the Grand piano, for drum overheads, for Toms, as room mics, on acoustic guitar, and on guitar amps. “They work great everywhere. They’re so smooth and flat, it’s crazy and I’ve used them for everything, also on vocals.”
Obie now has a pair of OC818 and is amazed that they sound almost identical: “We’ve put the microphones together and just had somebody play guitar and somebody else flip between each microphone, and you don’t hear the difference! They are really that well put together.”
“The gear should not get in the way of the magic happening. A great microphone doesn’t get in the way. It makes it easier to capture that magic. And that’s what the 818 does. I don’t care where you use it, it doesn’t get in the way, it captures what you want to get, it makes it easier for you.”
