Neumann U87

Lore & Background

In the world of professional recording, the U87 occupies a position almost mythological. Introduced in 1967, it has survived decades of digital disruption, USB-mic culture, and shifting production trends to remain the default choice in studios from Nashville to Tokyo. Its sound is often described as warm yet detailed, with a natural midrange presence that flatters the human voice without the harshness of brighter alternatives. For producers working in electronic and pop contexts, that balance is critical: the voice must sit in a dense mix of synthetic layers, and the U87's character helps it do so without excessive EQ surgery.

In Skrillex's production philosophy, the vocal is never just a vocal. It is a raw material to be sliced, reversed, pitch-shifted, and buried under layers of reese bass and distorted 808s. But every one of those transformations depends on the quality of the initial capture. A flat, sterile recording will sound flat no matter how much processing is applied. The U87's transformer-coupled output and large diaphragm give the engineer a signal rich enough to survive aggressive processing while retaining the micro-dynamics that make a performance feel alive. In sessions where Skrillex works with vocalists, the U87 is the instrument that bridges the organic and the synthetic.

The microphone's three-position pattern switch also offers a subtle creative lever. Cardioid is the workhorse for close vocal work, isolating the singer from room reflections. Figure-8 can be used for a more dramatic, phasey capture when a vocalist is positioned off-axis, and omnidirectional pulls in ambient room tone that can later be processed into texture. These options mean the U87 is not a single sound but a small family of sounds, and a producer like Skrillex, who thinks in terms of texture and timbre, has a wider palette available at the source.

In Their Own Story

The studio is dark except for the amber glow of the console faders and the soft blue standby light on the rack of outboard gear. The vocalist stands behind the pop filter, eyes closed, breathing through the U87's grille. Sonny watches the VU meter needle dance from the mixing position, not touching a single knob. He is listening for the moment the voice cracks, the micro-hesitation before a high note, the way the consonants scrape the diaphragm. That is the material. He mutes the synth rig, the sub-bass, the entire wall of digital aggression that will eventually surround this voice. Right now, it is just a human being and a German microphone from 1967, and the room is so quiet you can hear the transformer hum. He nods. She sings again. This time, the needle peeks into the red, and he lets it. Later, he will slice this take into forty pieces, pitch it down, run it through a bitcrusher, and bury it under a reese bass that shakes the floor. But right now, in this three-second window, the U87 is holding the whole world still.

Reader's Guide

The technique here is close-mic vocal capture as a foundation for aggressive electronic processing. In plain language: you record a vocalist very close to a high-fidelity condenser microphone, capturing every breath, sibilant edge, and dynamic swell with maximum detail, and then use that pristine signal as raw material for chopping, pitching, distorting, and layering.

Skrillex uses this approach because his mixes are dense. A vocal that enters the session already thin or sterile will disappear under the sub-bass and distorted synths. By starting with a U87 capture, he has a signal with enough harmonic richness and micro-dynamic information to survive multiple passes of processing. The voice can be sliced into stabs, reversed, pitch-shifted into formant territory, and drenched in feedback delay while still retaining a sense of being a real human being. The 'why' is that the U87's transformer output and large diaphragm produce a signal with a natural warmth in the 2–5 kHz range that sits in a dense electronic mix without needing aggressive EQ boosts that would introduce phase issues or harshness.

The kind of vocal production you hear on tracks like "Ice Cream Man" or the vocal stabs in "Bangarang" relies on this principle: the voice is treated as a texture, a rhythmic element, a melodic hook, but it still feels organic because the source recording was captured with a microphone that preserves the human element at the molecular level. The U87 is the reason the vocal chops in those records don't sound like synthetic formants but like a person being stretched.

Did You Know?

• The U87 has been in continuous production since 1967, making it one of the longest-running microphone designs still manufactured, a rarity in an industry where most gear is replaced every few years.
• Its three pickup patterns (cardioid, figure-8, omnidirectional) are switched by a single rotary dial on the back of the body, a mechanical design choice that has remained unchanged for decades.
• The U87 is a passive microphone, meaning it has no active electronics or preamp built in; it relies entirely on the quality of the studio preamp feeding it, which is why the choice of preamp is considered part of the U87
• Neumann produces the U87 in their factory in Berlin, Germany, and the microphone is still assembled by hand, a detail that distinguishes it from many mass-produced alternatives.