Upon lifting the lid, this confusion becomes a little less distracting. The mic itself is almost as showy as the man to whom it is attributed. Its polished steel chassis certainly looks the part and comes surrounded by more added extras than your run of the mill vocal mic. There is a leatherette pouch, mic clip and thread adjuster, a wind sock for when you’re playing one of the windier Hells Angels conferences, a micro_ bre cloth for maintaining that sheen, and a pouch full of picks garnished with cartoons of Mr. Gibbons himself. It’s a fun little package, but there’s more than just add-ons and bling that makes this mic worth your brogue.
I’ve reviewed an sE dynamic mic before and was suitably impressed by the liveliness and clarity of such a modestly priced unit. This is where my mind went racing when staring back at the bespectacled mug emblazoned on each side of the box. I liked the first V7 I tried for all its female and soprano vocal friendly high register detail; surely the guy who sang ‘Lowrider’ should require a much more bass focused frequency graph! Strangely enough, said graph is almost identical to the non-signature model bar a few tweaks and peaks here and there. In an effort to understand the thinking, I embarrassingly attempted an impersonation of that southern, drawling baritone and noticed something I had not accounted for. Far from leaving me lacking, all of that shimmer served to balance out and enhance the lowest tone I could muster in a descriptive and colourful way. As opposed to choosing a mic that leans toward the guttural, sE and Gibbons have chosen rather cleverly to brighten it up, which makes for a crisper and more ear-friendly listening experience, particularly in the live setting. On the whole sE Electronics are not setting out to change the world with their designs. Many of them take an existing rubric and expand on it ever so slightly with a few choice adjustments. In the instance of the V7 BFG, this makes for an ultimately useful and distinct take on the industry standard.
