Obie O’Brien
I have used the OC818s truly on everything. They work great everywhere. They're so smooth and flat it's crazy.
We all know (and love) Obie O’Brien – mostly for his work with Jon Bon Jovi, but also for the magic he put on productions of Barbra Streisand, The Marvelettes, Cole Redding, The Nighthawks, Alice Cooper, and many more. We sat down with him in his studio in – as he puts it – “the middle of nowhere”, Nottingham, PA, to talk microphones and more.
Obie first experienced the Austrian Audio OC818 Large-Diaphragm Condenser Microphone when he came through 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 he learned more about the details of the OC818, he was immediately taken with it, especially with the fact that the body of the OC818 capsule is ceramic: “The great thing about that is, it’s unaffected by moisture or heat temperature variations. Why doesn’t everybody do that?”
