Crazy, unique, amazing, rare Microphones!

[joel hamilton]

Who's got 'em??

I am a rabid collector of stuff that is a little left of center.

I am just interested in the neat/weird/amazing/crazy/unique mic's some of you might be using out there.

Some of the mics in my collection: RFT7151(with neumannM7/M8), Chrome neumann "gotham audio" TLM170 #45 of 100, 2 neumann CMV563's with M7's/M8's and MK55's, A "copperphone" by placid audio, a pair of RFT PM750's,
Original Stapes Omni's...A DaviSound 1950...Revox 3 500.. You know, the handmade or special ones that you covet.

They dont have to be expensive or overly rare, just cool to look at, sound great (or really odd) or for whatever reason: You love 'em!

When I got that RFT 7151c, I just held it in my arms like a baby for about 12 minutes before I even turned it on!

Full nerd gear love.

I just wanna know about some cool weird mic's you guys/gals have or have used!

[cgarges]

Just got a 1965 Lomo 19a9. Love it.

Strange looking & sounding:
RCA BK-1a
AKG D-99 Binaural Head (Anyone have any info on this mic?)
Altec 633A

Just odd:
Jax Model 122 dynamic
Akai ADM-11 (I think)
(3) original Sennheiser MD504s (not THAT weird, but cooler than the e604s)

Regular access to Milab VIP-50 and several Turner and American mics.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[joel hamilton]

Awesome! Is the BK1 the omni spaceship ribbon thingy? I used one a long time ago, and I have been looking for one ever since!

[cgarges]

No, it's the ice cream cone omnidirectional dynamic with really crappy frequency response. The one I have came with a base attatched to the bottom of it, but I've got a stand adapter for it, as well.

Great for filtered vocals (still pretty sibilant, but not as much as the 633A) and I like it as a room mic for certain guitar amps.

Great post, by the way. One of my favorite subjects.

Chris

[Professor]

I'm jealous about the RFT 7151 bottle mic - there was a guy selling one on eBay last week and I missed the final bidding by about 5 minutes, because I was walking down the hall and forgot the auction was closing. Someone outbid me by 25 dollars and won the mic for $2025. Oh the pain.

I do, however own one of those big RTT MKL-101 Russian bottle mics with the big M5 Lomo capsule that I found in a pawn shop of all places. Other pretty ones in my personal collection are an RCA 77d that has been fully restored and show-chromed and a recently tweaked RCA 74b. They're not weird so much as pretty to look at, hold and especially hear.

The school studio just acquired a couple odd balls last week when someone dropped off a box with three American D-22 mics which can be seen here http://www.ronharter.com/download/am_d22.pdf or here http://www.k-bay106.com/amer_d22.jpg
Otherwise, the school has some nice mics, like a pair of vintage U-67s and a UM-57 on it's way (eBay purchase) but again, nothing really 'weird' yet. I'm hoping to hit up the old radio stations for some donations though, so we'll see what comes out of the wood work then.

-Jeremy

[cgarges]

Other pretty ones in my personal collection are an RCA 77d that has been fully restored and show-chromed and a recently tweaked RCA 74b. They're not weird so much as pretty to look at, hold and especially hear.

Oh, man, I'm with you on the 77. I think most mics with two 4s, two 7s, or a 4 and a 7 in the model number are cool.

The school studio just acquired a couple odd balls last week when someone dropped off a box with three American D-22 mics which can be seen here http://www.ronharter.com/download/am_d22.pdf or here http://www.k-bay106.com/amer_d22.jpg
-Jeremy

The D-22 is one of the ones I was talking about. It's a favorite of mine, too.

Chris

[cgarges]

Damn computers.

[joel hamilton]

Wow, that would have been a good deal for the RFT. I got mine for closer to 3k, but with NOS tubes, and a pair of spares, with an M7 and an M8.

I wanted that 57 on ebay! I bet it was you! (or your school....)

Same deal, I was outbid by $25 bucks at the last second, because I was in the middle of a session!!!!

This recording job is getting in the way of my gear buying.....

[Professor]

Funny thing about the three Americans, one was a D-33 and two were D-22s, though all three look identical, and when I plugged them in, all three sounded different. Yay vintage. I'm figuring on cleaning them up, doubling checking all the internal wiring and either using them if they sound good on some material (with that killer 100-8,000 Hertz response) or just leaving them on display in the studio.

Oh, guess I forgot that in my collection I have a couple of Shure 55 family mics including an original BIG 55 Sinatra style (Elvis who?).

-Jeremy

[joel hamilton]

Holy crap, those D-22's look fun! They look like something off "the prisoner" tv show. Awesome!

Are those hard to find? I havent bumped into them in my usual countrywide pawn shop/ ebay/ gear dealer email type of operation when I am looking.

(and I am ALWAYS looking).

This is what I do for a living. Record. I like tools!

[Professor]

Um, possibly me if you were bidding on the one from the guy in California that just went for 1225. But at least you know it will be going to a happy home, to be joined later by the two CMV-563 mics he was also selling. Some of the joys of spending money that ain't mine. I don't mean to gloat either, if you won it I would have been equally happy that it was finding a nice home. What pisses me off is I have a dollar limit on single purchases I can make without a 'bid process' so I can't buy the Blue overhauled U-47 longbody someone has up with a buy-it-now of 5999. Hooray for the beauracratic method.

-Jeremy

[cgarges]

Did you see the picture in Tape Op a while back of Matt Chamberlain tracking the last Bowie record? Tony Visconti had a D-22-looking mic in the Tchad Blake under-the-ride cymbal position.

The guy who owns one of the studios I work in is a big mic collector, especially American broadcast stuff. He provides alot of vintage gear for film shoots and the like. He wired a broken Urei console so that the VUs responded to music for just that purpose. Anyway, he loaned a bunch of cool mics (including the D-22) to a friend of mine for a music video shoot. I played drums in the video and got to choose which cool mics should go where.

Chris

[cgarges]

Holy crap, those D-22's look fun! They look like something off "the prisoner" tv show. Awesome!

Are those hard to find? I havent bumped into them in my usual countrywide pawn shop/ ebay/ gear dealer email type of operation when I am looking.

They're on ebay all the time. At least they used to be. They don't usually go real cheap, but they're still fun. I mean, I couldn't bring myself to pay $50 for one.


Chris

[Professor]

Can't really say if the American Mics are hard to find as they were literally dropped into my mailbox at work from one of the other departments. Probably been sitting around in storage for decades - which is also where my two U-67s came from. I imagine that they were fairly common in the day and turn up from time to time on eBay.
If you read that little ad, you'll see they are impedence selectable under the name plate - I checked it out, that's a pretty cool feature.

-Jeremy

[Professor]

They look really cool, and inside they are almost identical to a Shure 57, capsule at the front wired back with two conductors on the 22 (3 on the D-33 internally balanced?) to a tiny little transformer in the tail. About as thick around the middle as a large pen, but not quite a Sharpie. And a subtle reminder of the Discovery spaceship from 2001.

-Jeremy