Scope Labs Periscope

The metal hemisphere at the business end actually houses not an eyeball but an ear, in the shape of a miniature omnidirectional electret microphone capsule. Within the Periscope’s copper‑coloured body, meanwhile, your 48V phantom supply doesn’t only feed the impedance converter. It also powers a built‑in analogue compressor, hard‑wired to nuke the signal into oblivion.

In most studios, it’s easy for the engineer to talk to the musicians, but unless they have vocal mics, it can be hard to hear their replies. SSL consoles thus featured a heavily compressed ‘listenback’ or ‘reverse talkback’ channel. Most consoles don’t boast such luxuries, and the Periscope fulfils this function extremely well.

Monster drum sounds:
The compressor can’t be switched off or adjusted in any way, and it’s set up to deliver a lot of gain reduction even on quiet sources. So, when you put it up as a room mic, it doesn’t just politely rein in the odd overzealous floor tom. It delivers the kind of frontal assault you’d get from an Universal Audio 1176 in ‘all buttons in’ mode, and then some.

Pumped Up Kicks:
As you’d expect, it is hit and miss. You’ll need a good‑sounding room, because you’re going to hear the room. It can be noisy on quiet sources, and if the drummer is heavy on the cymbals, the results can be more ‘interesting’ than usable. But they’re not easily recreated using conventional mics and plug‑ins, and if you’re thinking ‘Couldn’t I just patch in a compressor on any mic and set it up exactly right for the source?’ you’ll be missing the point. Even if you happen to have a spare Universal Audio 1176 kicking around, how often do you actually have the time to set something like this up on the off‑chance that it’ll be useful?

The Periscope’s USP is immediacy. You’ll find yourself leaving it permanently set up so that you can hear, at the press of a button, what it brings to any given session. It can be surprisingly usable on things that aren’t drums, and it can make the most ordinary drum kit sound like an approaching avalanche. And even if you don’t use it in the finished track, it can be an inspiring and useful source to feed into musicians’ monitor mixes.

At first glance, the Periscope might seem expensive for a one‑trick pony. But its one trick is a good one that you’ll use more often than you think.

Really disappointed by this mic.
I like the looks, i like the idea, but i just don't think it sounds that good.
It gives you instant smashed compression sound, but not a good one.
In the end i always get better results with different solutions, to me any SDC going through a 7167 or even through a nice plugin will sound much better than the periscope.
I can imagine it would make sens if you only have acces to a limited number of inputs and you don't have acces to a compressor, but if you have hardware or plugins you are wasting your time and money.