Dave Catching’s Rancho de la Luna, David Royer, and the Story of Mojave Microphones

We motored out to the Mojave Desert to hang with the affable Dave Catching, owner of Rancho de la Luna: sonic playground for Queens of the Stone Age, Kurt Vile, Arctic Monkeys, and many more. Not too many people know that Rancho de la Luna is also the birthplace of Mojave Microphones! Legend has it that many lunas ago, a wind-burnt, shirtless and jorts-wearing David Royer showed up on a motorbike with a microphone in an old sock: his prototype Mojave condenser microphone.