Last Updated on April 3, 2022 by Andrew Culture
In the world of music gear, all manufacturers like to claim world firsts. Everyone likes to think they’re breaking the mold and offering the universal something truly unique. Sadly this is often a fanciful embellishment of the truth. But sometimes, it’s true, and frequently that truth comes from British Company Aston Microphones.
Aston is known for their passion for getting feedback from industry professionals while developing new products. We recently reported that for their next product Aston planned to open out the consultation process to the whole of planet earth. A decision that we viewed as much brave as it was ambitious.
After the white coat wearing folk at Aston completed the gargantuan task of collating a whole lot of feedback from three months of public listening tests – following on from 18 months of development work behind closed doors – a new microphone has been born. It’s worth bearing in mind that Aston Microphones’ product range is remarkably small, so launching a new product is far from ‘just another day at the office’ for these guys. It’s a real big deal.
Aston head cheese James Young explains :
Introducing the Aston Element… bundle
The Element is packaged as a bundle and includes a shock mount and a nifty magnetic pop shield. The microphone itself has a new proprietary capsule type designed by Aston, called ‘Ridyon’. It’s a large, but lightweight, moving coil diaphragm which uses phantom power to deliver a capacitor-style performance and clarity, with the punch of a dynamic mic and open sound of a ribbon.
The Element is a flexible beast and is ideally suited to, well, everything by the looks of it. Although the blind testing was based on acoustic guitar along with male and female vocal, by having the transient detail of a capacitor, the robustness and directionality of a dynamic and the midrange presence of a ribbon mean that it could be put in front of practically any sound source and it should be able to reproduce it with aplomb.
Price at time of typing is a surprisingly low £159 / €179 / $199 MRP.
So is the Aston Element worth buying?
Aston Microphones tend to upset people. Not us, the consumers, but other microphone companies. We’re guessing here, but Aston manufactures exceptionally high-quality microphones that cost considerably less than those churned out by the well-established marketing leaders. Not only do Aston sell microphones that won’t cripple your wallet, their microphones are also built like brick privies. Here’s a video that nicely illustrates the point.
This news article is not some industry-contact-pleasing hagiography; everyone here at Making-Music.com relies on the Aston Microphones we own to ‘get the job done’, day after day, week after week, month after… you get the idea.
In short, at this price, it would almost seem daft not to buy an Aston Microphones Element!
Find out more about the Element direct from Aston Microphones…
