R/E/P > Klaus Heyne's Mic Lab
CT-12 Capsule?
maarvold:
I was fortunate enough to spend several hours last night at my friend, Carlos Castro's studio hanging out with him while Martins Saulespurens (BLUE microphones) worked on Carlos's beautiful pair of Telefunken ELAM250's. Carlos had heard 1 of Tim's capsules in the 250-type mic that I hired Dave Pearlman to build for me as an experiment and was so impressed that he immediately ordered 2 capsules for himself.
Carlos, who was Bruce Swedien's assistant (my impression is that it was for several years), has a serious love for well-maintained, sonically excellent equipment and, although he is not what I would call 'a technical guy', he has a great ear and owns some of the best-sounding gear I've heard and used. His 250's have a special midrange magic that I've been trying to coax out of my mic.
The reason why Martins was there is that, although both of Carlos's 250's were extremely well-matched in cardioid, one of the mics wasn't sounding right in omni and he wanted to fix that.
So Martins began by replacing the CK12 capsule on the problem mic with one of Tim's capsules in hopes that the match would be quite good and the other mic could be left alone. We spent a lot of time level-matching the 2 mics prior to testing and after testing my personal feeling was that Tim's capsule was very close to the CK12, but I preferred it: it felt like the original CK12 was a slightly more 'pale', or less robust-sounding, version of the same sound. It almost struck me as if you had 2 bottles of a really great wine and drank one in its prime (Tim's), then drank the other one 10 years later (CK12) and you were reminded of everything you loved about the bottle in the first place, but the effect wasn't quite so strong this time around. This was a top-to-bottom feeling--not just about one area of the frequency spectrum.
Unfortunately the capsule swap didn't cure the omni problem (which now seems to be switch-related); Carlos also preferred Tim's capsule and asked Martins to replace the CK12 in his other mic as well. Roughly an hour later we had the mics back on the stands and again did the level-matching and after some further testing, Carlos gave it his 'thumbs up' that both of Tim's capsules were very well matched. (Klaus, I was providing the 'program material' for the testing at this point and didn't officially hear the matching between Tim's 2 capsules, but I know Carlos and he wouldn't have signed off if it hadn't been "spot on". But if you feel this is 3rd party information, I'll understand.)
Then Martins suggested that I put my mic up to see how it did against Carlos's. Dave Pearlman built mine into an Apex 460 body (although I rebuilt the head basket with a mesh configuration that much more closely resembled the real 250 and that made a significant improvement) and the components that I bought for Dave to use were based on knowledge that I gleaned from much reading on these forums (Thank You, Klaus, J.J., Terry, Oliver and others). My mic held up very well and, at one point, Martins and I both guessed that mine was the 'real' 250, although ultimately it didn't quite have the 'see-through' transparency that Carlos's mic had. FWIW, I also had Dave build--from scratch--the correct power supply from the schematic. I wanted to try this out because the B+ rail wasn't based on a bridge rectifier-type configuration, like the supply (which Dave modified as well) that came with the Apex 460 was and I thought that it might have some effect on the mic's sonics.
Bottom line: It takes a long time for me to fully evaluate gear--sometimes a year or more. But I've been using one of Tim's capsules in my mic for a couple of months now: in my book, they are great and I'm very pleased.
David Bock:
Quote:
It almost struck me as if you had 2 bottles of a really great wine and drank one in its prime (Tim's), then drank the other one 10 years later (CK12) and you were reminded of everything you loved about the bottle in the first place, but the effect wasn't quite so strong this time around.
Not a good generalization since it really depends on the wine (cheap stuff excepted as per your argument)- some need ten years before you even start thinking about drinking them, some age and it's just a matter of taste preference to the young/old debate.
Quote:
Bottom line: It takes a long time for me to fully evaluate gear--sometimes a year or more
try to tell THAT to the "please post a sound file" crowd.
compasspnt:
Michael, can you please post a sound file?
maarvold:
dbock wrote on Sat, 30 May 2009 12:06
Quote:
It almost struck me as if you had 2 bottles of a really great wine and drank one in its prime (Tim's), then drank the other one 10 years later (CK12) and you were reminded of everything you loved about the bottle in the first place, but the effect wasn't quite so strong this time around.
Not a good generalization since it really depends on the wine (cheap stuff excepted as per your argument)- some need ten years before you even start thinking about drinking them, some age and it's just a matter of taste preference to the young/old debate.
Maybe a better analogy would be Natalie Wood in "Sex and the Single Girl" and Natalie Wood 10 years later. Still a lot of great stuff there, but in 1964, and in that film, OMG!
compasspnt wrote on Sat, 30 May 2009 12:25
Michael, can you please post a sound file?
Terry,
As is often the case (when you are being witty), you crack me up.
Marik:
maarvold wrote on Sat, 30 May 2009 18:11
Unfortunately the capsule swap didn't cure the omni problem (which now seems to be switch-related)
With all due respect, the pattern switch would be the first (and rather easy) thing to check before resorting to capsule swap, which is rather an expensive procedure...
Best, Mark Fouxman
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