(dramatic orchestral music)
- [Tom] How "neat" would it "bee"
if you could get an awesome condenser mic
at a great price
that's designed specifically to handle
all the work you can throw at it?
Maybe you've heard some of the buzz
about the Neat Microphones Worker Bee.
So, today we're gonna put it to the test
and see if it's worth the honey-
I mean money.
(dramatic orchestral music)
And this video is not sponsored in any way.
I legitimately thought that this was a Neat Microphone
and it would bee fun to check it out.
So I bought it.
I got it.
And now we're gonna take a look at it.
But before we jump into the details of this microphone,
the history of Neat is actually pretty neat.
So, let's take a look at this bee's colony
and just see what- let's just look at the company.
Neat was created by the founders
of Blue Microphones in 2014.
Blue was purchased by The Riverside Company in 2013
and then purchased by Logitech in 2018.
Now I'm speculating in a pretty huge way here,
but it wouldn't surprise me if these acquisitions,
especially that first one,
played a role in why the founders of Blue wanted to leave
and start a new company in the first place.
And from what I can tell after surfing the world wide web,
Neat was founded in 2014,
but their first products
didn't actually come out until 2016
and then it was a part of Gibson.
(Like the guitar company.)
There were then some administrative shake-ups
and the products became kind of hard to find,
pretty much only being available online.
It's a pretty interesting story
and I'll put a link to an article
in the description of this video
that covers it in more detail if you wanna check that out.
And it doesn't end there because in January of 2021,
Neat was purchased by Turtle Beach,
a publicly traded gaming headset company
which seems to be set on
bringing back members of the original team
and revitalizing the Neat brand and products.
Which is pretty neat.
And all that is to say that sometimes these microphones
can be hard to find.
In my experience, it seems like the Worker Bee
is the most widely available online.
The MSRP is $199,
but I was able to purchase this one brand new for $90.
And shopping around at different retailers,
it seems like that's not really an unusual price
for this microphone.
And that means that this is actually
an unbee-lievable budget option
because at $90 it's even cheaper than the PodMic
which has kind of always been
my go-to budget podcast vocal microphone option.
And you get a lot for that price.
In addition to the microphone,
everything comes in this giant box,
which they say is entirely recyclable,
but also they intend for it to be useful
because if you take the mic box out of it,
delicately and elegantly,
then you sort of end up with this plastic bin here
that's great for cables and stuff like that.
And I'm not even someone who really cares
about product packaging,
because you use the packaging of the product
for a couple of minutes
and then you use the product for potentially years.
So I don't really care what kind of box it comes in.
But this, as my first experience into Neat,
it was pretty neat.
And so in addition to the microphone and the shock mount,
you also get a pop filter,
which I am using right now.
It comes with a cloth bag to carry it in.
It also comes with extra screws for the shock mount
to attach to the mic securely and an adapter
to make sure that it will fit on pretty much any mic stand.
And maybe most confusingly, it comes with this thing.
I don't know what it is.
It's sort of a top, but it's not,
but it also has the name of the mic
and then your serial number on the bottom.
I have no idea, but it's cute. I don't know.
Oh, and then you get the documentation,
which in the world of microphones that I am used to,
even something like the Shure SM7B
has relatively limited documentation.
It just says, "here's your microphone,
"here's the pickup patterns."
But this is like a beautifully printed thing
that has not just info
about the mic and different microphones,
but also recording techniques.
They also lean pretty heavily into the bee theme
with things like "Care and Feeding,"
"Pollination."
But what's actually pretty cool
is it not only gives you the info
like you would expect done in a very nice design-y way,
it actually gives you recording technique suggestions
for pretty much everything.
So you can do vocals, electric guitar,
acoustic guitar, strings,
and it has little paragraphs
for all of these that explain
how you might want to mic up those specific instruments.
And some of it is pretty cool.
So like for example, on a drum set,
it talks about how you could use
multiple Worker Bees together
as a colony to position the microphones in different ways
and get the best drum sound possible.
It even gives you some ideas for like electric instruments.
If you mic the amp, but then have another mic
near the fingers on the fret board,
you can mix those tracks together
so you hear some of the organic finger sounds
mixed with the electric sound-
Like point is,
those are actually really helpful, interesting things.
And it's more than you would typically find
in microphone documentation,
even with microphones
that are significantly more expensive than this one.
And the reason I wanted to share all that is
because that is a lot of stuff for the price.
And as the customer, I am super cool with that.
Please give me all the things
for the amount of money I spend on a microphone.
But for a company that has sort of this confusing history
of like, are they in business?
Are they out of business?
Are they widely available?
Are they not?
I have no idea how this is profitable.
And I'll just leave it at that.
As a condenser mic, the Worker Bee
runs on 48 volts of phantom power.
But as the instructions point out,
even though phantom power is supposed to bee 48 volts,
a lot of interfaces,
especially some on the really, really budget end of things,
don't actually give out that true 48 volts.
And so the instructions say that
this can run on as little as 35 volts
of pretty much any interface or mixer you have
that has any sort of phantom power,
should be more than enough to power this microphone,
which is awesome.
And it really does have a lot of output.
I'm using it on the RODECaster Pro right now,
just on the generic condenser mic setting
with the gain set to 18.
And the channel's fader is just above halfway.
So I could push this much, much louder,
way louder than I would ever need to,
and it would be fine.
And it also works great with the Focusrite Scarlett.
This is the 2i2, and this is the Rode AI-1 interface.
Both of these can power the Worker Bee no problem.
And the gain can be around 12 or 1 o'clock.
So you still have plenty of volume
if you're used to dynamic microphones
with interfaces like this
that just don't have enough gain
and you have to deal with software afterwards.
A condenser microphone in general
will give you a louder signal,
but this one is incredibly loud.
And once the mic is connected to phantom power,
there's a little logo on the back
that will illuminate orange
to let you know that it's getting power
and then you are totally ready to go.
I'm gonna put some headphones on here
so I can hear everything.
'Cause I've mentioned that for this video
I've been using this Worker Bee on the RODECaster Pro
on the generic condenser mic setting.
I've been using this mic pretty exclusively
for the past few weeks.
And I've gotten a lot of great results out of it
gotten a lot of great feedback on it,
and gotten some cool compliments on it.
So it's generated some positive buzz,
you might say.
Now, as I mentioned earlier,
it does come with this little honeycomb pop filter
that I've been using for the duration of this video.
I really love the way the mic looks without the pop filter,
but this does make a difference.
So without the pop filter,
it's "Peter Piper pitched a podcast"
and then with the pop filter,
"Peter Piper pitched a podcast."
I've also found though that positioning this microphone
just sort of off to the side,
works incredibly well.
It has no problem picking up voice
and then all my breath is blowing past it.
So I'm not giving any sort of plosives, pa-pa-pa, at all
and it still sounds really great.
So this has sort of been my positioning and my setup
most of the time that I've been using this microphone.
And speaking of the honeycomb pop filter,
do you know how bees brush their hair?
They use honeycombs.
(ba-dum-tssh)
And the shock mount is shockingly effective
because there've been lots of times
where I accidentally hit the boom arm
and it's not even being picked up
in the microphone really at all.
If I hit the microphone here, (tapping)
you can hear that.
But if I hit the boom arm or hit the shock mount,
well, you can hear that. There's a little rumble.
But I'm always moving my boom arm while recording
and normally that noise transfers over to the microphone,
but not in this case
and that really helps things to continue
sounding their best.
And the way that the microphone fits
into the shock mount is pretty interesting.
It just slides in and then there's two thumb screws
that you screw in to mount it there.
But what I like is,
especially since I'm using it on the Rode PSA1,
normally the microphone would be facing this way
and I wouldn't be able to talk into it
because I have my PSA1 mounted over here,
kind of to the side and behind me.
So sometimes positioning microphones
can be sort of difficult
and what I was able to do,
since the microphone's square and the shock mount is square,
I was able to just not use the thumb screws
and then just turn the microphone this way.
And now it faces me from this weird angle.
So that's kind of a cool little bit of versatility
in this shock mount.
And since this mic is marketed
as being great for instruments,
let's do a couple quick tests on different instruments.
This is what it sounds like on a clean electric guitar.
(attempting to play "Beer" by Reel Big Fish)
And here's a distorted electric guitar.
(attempting to play "Roots Radical" by Rancid)
Here is an acoustic guitar.
(attempting to play "Point/Counterpoint" by Streetlight Manifesto)
And this is what it sounds like on an electric bass.
(absolutely nailing "Time Bomb" by Rancid)
And finally, here's what it sounds like
as a badly positioned overhead drum mic.
(playing the first beats that came to mind)
So you can see how versatile this microphone really is
and it's also incredibly well-built.
The durability, the build quality is excellent.
I feel pretty confident that it's not going
to just fall apart or break any time soon.
And that means because it could be used
for all these different applications,
that I think it would really hold up to that pretty well.
It might look a little plasticky on camera,
but it's very solidly built.
Most of it is all metal.
Like the pop filter is plastic
and, of course, the shock mount
has a few little plastic parts and rubber parts,
but otherwise this is just all very heavy duty metal.
It's heavy metal, yo.
And the visuals of this microphone
are probably the most polarizing thing about it.
The color scheme and the design of the bee
might sting the eyes of some people,
but I actually really like it.
So it's all just personal preference.
I think that it adds a lot
of really cool color and characteristic
and especially in an environment like mine
that's got stuff and colors and things everywhere.
I think it just adds something super cool to it.
And just for reference, since I have it,
I wanted to compare this to the Rode NT1.
So both of these microphones are set
to the exact same generic condenser setting
on the RODECaster Pro.
And I did a review all about the Rode NT1
where I really, really do love this microphone.
It's an awesome condenser microphone.
It usually sells for about to $260 to $270.
So it's priced at a higher point than this condenser mic,
but here is the Worker Bee right here on the RODECaster Pro.
And here is the NT1 on the RODECaster Pro.
Both microphones have the same settings,
the same gain level.
Everything is exactly the same.
This is the Rode NT1 condenser microphone.
And this is the Neat Worker Bee condenser microphone.
There's definitely difference between the two.
I honestly don't think one is better than the other.
I think it's really more of just a preference thing.
What do you like more?
What do you think would be easier to work with
with your voice and your environment?
Because again, as condenser microphones,
this is going to be a little more prone
to picking up environmental noise
than a dynamic microphone would be.
So even though these microphones
can sometimes bee hard to find,
I do actually think that it's worth fighting the swarm
to find one for yourself.
And it'll bee so interesting
to see where things go from here.
I'm very hopeful that the company
might have a bit of a comeback
and we might see these microphones more widely available,
more models coming back.
Maybe they'd even be available in stores
or at more retailers and just more accessible
because this is a really cool microphone.
It's super fun.
It definitely does its own thing in its own way
and I always appreciate that.
And now that you've seen me put the Worker Bee to work,
if that's not enough to help you make your mic decision,
you can dive into this hive
of mic review and comparison videos.
(you can't spell "subscribe" without the bee)