An exclusive interview with Ear Trumpet Labs' Philip and Malachi Graham
For better or for worse, my Instagram feed these days is basically a never-ending scroll of cowboy-hatted hunks and babes singing into their phone cameras. Who can relate?
But lately, I couldn’t help but notice these really cool old-timey-looking microphones popping up in my feed. In live stage performances, as well as livestreams and taped studio sessions, it seemed like these 1930s-inspired mics were suddenly everywhere. Even in our own American Songwriter artist sessions! I had to know more.
It wasn't hard to find out that the brand behind these mics is called Ear Trumpet Labs, a father-daughter operation out of Portland, Oregon. With 11 different models tailored for a variety of live acoustic performance uses, Ear Trumpet Labs mics have become the go-to, IYKYK microphones for bluegrass, Americana, and country artists looking for a better live acoustic sound with an elevated aesthetic to boot.
I was able to track down Philip and Malachi Graham, founders of Ear Trumpet Labs, for a chat about their brand's inspiration, products, and the artists who use their mics. We had a really informative and stimulating conversation—here it is, condensed and edited for clarity.
Interview With Ear Trumpet Labs
American Songwriter: I'm really excited to talk to you guys—I love the mics. I reached out because I think these mics look really cool, and I just wanted to a) get my hands on one and b) learn more about the brand. A lot of my favorite artists are using ETL mics, and I was just like, all right—this is something I need to know more about.
Malachi Graham: Oh, that's great. We totally love hearing that, and I mean, a lot of our favorite artists are using them too. I would say that's been one of the most insanely rewarding parts of doing this, having a tiny workshop where it's the two of us and four builders in Portland. To have the Violent Femmes using our mics, and Brandi Carlile, and Elvis Costello, it's a little bit unbelievable for us still, so it's just been so much fun.
AS: How did you guys get started making microphones?
Philip Graham: Well, I was tinkering with a bunch of different things in my basement, just to kinda keep my sanity, doing some different audio gear—guitar amps, and a little bit of recording gear stuff too, circuits mostly.
And then when Malachi started writing songs, we talked about how we should record some of them, and I would love to help her with that. The first time, literally, that I started looking at microphones as a serious project, was to record her. I thought, "these are pretty expensive," and because I was in the habit of building and tinkering with things, I was just looking into whether I could build them myself, and that was literally how I started.
AS: That is such an incredibly unique origin story!
MG: He's a really supportive dad, basically. I was like, you know, a 20-year-old baby songwriter and my dad was like, "I bet I could make a microphone…"
"I showed up with this custom, wild-looking microphone and it just kinda just kind of went from there."
PG: I was just building them in my basement, from stuff that I had there. That's where the visual look of stuff came from, really. My one insight, I guess, was that you could kind of make microphones out of anything as long as it’s metal and provides adequate shielding, so why not make them cool-looking?
AS: Wow.
PG: So I was initially making them to record. But they were interesting-looking, and then Malachi started using them playing out and some musicians started seeing them, and I had more of the direct question: “can I perform with these? Like, do these work as live mics?”
And so I did a little bit more, actually a lot more, research and experimentation to really make them work as live mics as well as stage mics.
AS: Can I just say that it’s such a flex to roll up to the show with a one-of-a-kind mic in tow?
MG: I was so inexperienced that I didn't even know that that was a flex! Like, I was playing my first gigs in cafés or whatever, and yeah, showed up with this custom, wild-looking microphone and it just kinda just kind of went from there. To think about that now and to think about all the stages that they're on, it's pretty incredible.
We just loved the acoustic quality of condenser microphones, which are typically not used live—they’re so much better known in the recording studio. But because Philip was self-taught and curious as an electrical engineer, he just was kind of like “what could I do to make these work in a live setting? So that's been acoustically a huge part of our mission, helping bring that studio-quality sound for live performance.
PG: The subtlety, and you know, delicacy, that you can really capture with a condenser… Seeing a lot of singer-songwriters on stage (with) just their voice and an acoustic guitar and using a mic (which shall not be named, but is ubiquitous) very close up, and then plugging in their acoustic guitar, as the standard default in live sound, just completely frustrated me.
Just over and over again, and being like, that sounds awful, and there's absolutely no reason—you have no stage volume to contend with. Like, why aren't people paying attention to the quality that you can actually get live, especially with, you know, beautiful instruments?
MG: So that was sort of our origin story. That was 2011?
PG: Yeah, 2011 was that very first year, and I was still making prototypes, but the first versions of the existing models. Edwina, for sure, came out and then started getting them, that winter, in the hands of some artists. The Portland scene has been incredibly helpful because people are so open and willing to try stuff out. Then, when they find things they like, they're really happy to share it around.
AS: So what if I told you that I played a gig last night and I used your microphone at my show? I play classic country, folk, bluegrass, acoustic—I play a Martin D-28—and the feedback was incredible. Everyone said that it sounded awesome, and I feel like it lent an intangible quality of just, atmosphere, or something, to the performance, which is what I'm always shooting for. Like, yeah—the polar opposite of the (microphone model redacted) and plugged-in acoustic guitar that I hate.
MG: Yeah, absolutely, and we just we love enabling that kind of performance. The best thing we can hear from an artist is that it gave them the space to feel really natural, to sound like themselves. I think the thing with a close mic and a pickup is it just sounds amplified, inherently there's like an amplified quality to the sound, and with our mics, like—the best compliment we can get is that it barely sounds like it's mic’d. It just sounds louder. It sounds like yourself, but louder.
AS: Are there any historic mic models that are inspirations for your designs?
PG: Not really, directly. I don't mean to overstate that the circuitry in the design is necessarily super creative or unique. The circuitry is based on the fairly standard transformerless circuit design that's been around since the ‘60s; it's called the Schoeps circuit. Schoeps was the German company that first used this design, but it's out in the public domain now.
Their company is still around, but they were the first ones to do this particular circuit. It's a clever engineering design, and it's just sort of the backbone (of ETL mics). The basis was a way to do a condenser mic without needing a transformer. And that gives kind of a platform where I can tailor the sound, to a certain extent, in the circuitry.
A lot of the sound quality comes from the capsule that you choose to use. A lot of the rest of it comes from the physical design around the capsule—the shape of the head basket, materials, like that, and then some of (the sound), probably less than those others, comes from the circuit itself. Changes and tweaks that you can make in the circuit just emphasize or deemphasize certain frequencies. That's kind of the acoustic design process.
MG: We love our size of capsule that we've chosen. It's pretty consistent in most of our models. It's 26mm—that's the condenser element. But it's a medium-large diaphragm, so it's not a huge diaphragm like would necessarily be in some studio mics, but that makes it more stable in a live environment and less fragile. So that’s something that kind of works.
PG: Many of the custom mics that you see, especially the studio designs, are really variations of four big popular German studio mikes that have been around since the 60s. Those all use a larger diaphragm, mostly dual-diaphragm capsules, that are quite different than the capsules that I use. The capsules I use are single-diaphragm, a little bit smaller, they have just enough of that character that a large diaphragm provides, but they are much more stable and predictable for stage use. That's really why I like them.
AS: Can you explain some of the differences between the different models?
MG: Sure, yeah. We have a line of 11 distinct microphones. We have some mics that are more tailored towards a single source or a single player. Those are some of our smaller models.
Edwina is extremely popular from our line, and we also do those in stereo pairs. Edwina will sound great on vocals, on acoustic guitar, on many kinds of acoustic instruments. It's kind of a workhorse.
"For a songwriter looking for one really multipurpose mic, Edwina is a great choice."
You can use it on a single player, about a foot in front of the performer, and it'll pick up both voice and guitar and we do we love that about our models.
One thing that's great about our mics for songwriters and performers is that they work well both live and in the studio, in home recording. Edwina is really versatile. You can just move it around and use it as a drum overhead, use it on a guitar amp, use it in kind of all different settings, so Edwina is one of the main workhorses of our line.
Other great vocal mics include Chantelle and Wanda, our newest model. Wanda has a specialty on high-SPL sources, so it can also be used on trumpets, guitar cabs, drums, louder things in general.
Then we have our larger suspended ring models. That includes Myrtle, Louise, Josephine. Those have the bigger visual presence. In their circuitry, they have more of a full low-end response, so those are great if you wanna gather a full band around a single microphone and that's something that's pretty special about our line and something we've really gotten known for in the Bluegrass world and in the Americana world.
Even when a larger act wants to do a breakdown part of their set, they want that intimate moment on stage where we kind of strip it all away—Brandi Carlile uses Myrtle like that, Gregory Alan Isakov uses Louise. We have the Wood Brothers using Myrtle. (Myrtle is) just basically a single mic that you can use to pick up all of your vocals and all of the acoustic instruments, if you gather around it within a reasonable distance.
We have Nadine for upright bass. Evelyn is stereo, so it's essentially two Delphinas built into one body. Mabel is the one multi-pattern one that we do that's much more specifically for studio use.
We have a quiz on our website that can help point you in the right direction.
We haven't put a new model in a couple years, but we definitely knew that we wanted something like Wanda—a little bit more of a ‘40s-’50s aesthetic. A lot of our line is a little bit more 1920s, 1930s.
MG: Philip draws a lot of inspiration from like, back when microphones looked really cool.
PG: There's been a bit of an aesthetic flattening of the microphone. I would say from the ‘60s on, people started getting less freaky with the how things look.
MG: As you know, he was looking and tinkering with things from his basement and local hardware stores, and he was like “well, if I'm making it from scratch, why not make it look iconic?” Like, it has this beautiful studio-quality sound, and it can look really beautiful. Just like people pick out a guitar that looks really cool, and sounds really good. It can be both.
Of course the sonic aspect is hugely important, but you don't consider it a gimmick if somebody is playing an amazing-looking guitar and wearing a cool outfit—it's all part of the performance, and those things can go hand-in-hand.
We hear from The Milk Carton Kids, who use Edwina, that it starts out with people going, “what’s with that funny looking mic,” but then they lean in and listen closer, and they're like “Oh, that sounds amazing,” that the curiosity about the aesthetics makes people realize how good they sound too.
The Wood Brothers, who use Myrtle, call it their Time Machine. Pull it out, it just like it takes everyone back, visually, but it just makes everybody kind of simmer down and lean into that part of the show. It's like, how do you make a really intimate moment on stage?
AS: So we've talked a lot about the live uses. What about recording?
PG: The crossover world between live performance and recorded, where people expect the audio quality to be as good as possible, but when there is also a visual aspect to it, that's definitely an area where it's just a natural fit for these.
Then it shades into actual studio use. In the studio, you have a ton of options. Nobody that makes microphones would ever say that any one mic is the right choice for everything. You should always experiment and try different things out. As I said, they're not emulating any of the classic designs. They are not trying to be anything else in particular, and because of that—and because they do sort of have a different design focus—they have a particular sound quality to them that is different than most of the other mics in there, and engineers really appreciate having that, at least as an option.
AS: That's incredibly rare in this day and age too, when everybody wants to emulate the classic historic mic models.
MG: The other thing that I found in the studio is that a lot of what makes a studio mic designed for studio use is that it sounds exquisite right at the sweet spot—that is their main, almost their exclusive, design consideration.
Because (the signal) is not being amplified, something special about our mics is that we work to have a really consistent frequency response across the whole pickup pattern. Most of our mics are pretty generous cardioid, but what I found is that that makes it really forgiving and beautiful in a studio setting as well. It doesn't have to be placed absolutely perfectly to pick something up beautifully, and I've been able to track harmonies simultaneously, or track gang vocals with several people, and it's gonna pick everybody up and not have weird feedback loaves in different directions or just strange frequency response.
AS: Absolutely, that's perfect too for artists who are accustomed to performing—you might move around a lot. While you're playing, having a little freedom to step off the “X.”
PG: Yeah, they really shine as an artists' recording mic. For, you know, the recording that everybody does now. They are a little more forgiving of not perfectly treated spaces. Having that is just a whole extra benefit to a mic that you may of as primarily your live mic, but it turns out it's really great for doing your home recording with.
MG: People ended up using them for livestreams as well, and we're just really impressed by that quality of sound.
AS: Totally. I can't wait to try and use mine for some home recording stuff. I'm kind of a minimalist. I like the idea of having one thing that I love to use, so I have one mic that I can take to a gig and make all my records with.
MG: Totally, some people just keep their Edwina up in their room all the time, to quickly capture an idea. And then, it's gonna be a nice enough recording if that ends up on your final record, that's not crazy. Way better than a voice memo!
Head to eartrumpetlabs.com to learn more.
All images courtesy of Ear Trumpet Labs.
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