Recording - December 2016 - 38

CM-100's sibling CM-300 mic, but for that one you had to use a 9.1V lithium battery
that was (and is) notoriously scarce. You could also use the 9.1V battery in the CM-100,
and get the same improvement in dynamic range-if you could find the battery.
Nakamichi is out of the mic business now, but industry scuttlebutt at the time said that they
had contracted the manufacture of these designs to Audio-Technica or Primo. Audio-Technica is
still very active in making professional mics, and Primo still exists too, so if it's true that one of them
built the CM-100 I'm sure it would be straightforward to bring it back. I wish it would happen.

Neumann KM 84
You were probably wondering which of Neumann's long-gone models I'd want to bring back (besides the U 47
fet), and my first choice is the KM 84, a cardioid mic that was part of a modular series that included the KM 83
(omni) and KM 85 (cardioid, but with a bass rolloff). But the KM 84 holds a special place in my affections; my first
purchase of pro-level mics was a pair of KM 84s, back in the 1980s, and they've served me well since.
They're unmatched for recording most banjos and mandolins, and some acoustic guitars (they like Taylors and
Gibsons better than Martins or Martin copies). But I've also used them as an ORTF pair for drum overheads on a
not-too-loud drummer, with sterling results; they're great on strings, winds or choirs, and I even used one on a
moderate-level bass amp in a jazz session. Neumann has been cagey about publishing frequency response curves
on these, but the upshot of what they have put out is that the KM 84 is remarkably flat-and stays that way off-axis,
making it useful when controlled leakage is happening (as in the Ottoman Underground session that provided the
sample clip for the "First Steps" series, where I used it on the clarinet).
The KM 84 was replaced after a long run by the KM 184. It used similar electronics, but a slightly modified capsule that introduced a high-frequency bump centered around 7.5 kHz. For most close-miking applications I find the
KM 84's neutrality more broadly useful than the newer, brighter version,
and I wish they'd bring it back.
As mentioned in the introduction, the KM 84 evolved a good deal
during its time on earth. I suspect the tantalum capacitors in the head
amplifier contributed to a slight glare in the midrange when the early
mics were used in close; by the end of the run, with changes in the circuit (including aluminum electrolytic capacitors), the glare
was gone. That's the one I want to see again.

Sennheiser MD 421
The MD 421 was a curious microphone. Its design was pure Space Age
(kind of like the spaceship in 2001), with a remarkable resemblance to a sideaddress condenser mic-but it was really an end-address dynamic. It became
famous as the main vocal mic in the 1971 film The Concert for Bangladesh,
and it already had a reputation as the go-to choice for close-miking toms.
The MD 421 was bright; the published frequency response curves show a +4
dB shelf from 2 kHz on up, and that brightness aided intelligibility against a rockband backdrop. It had enough proximity effect that a knowing vocalist could
manipulate the tone by varying distance; I suspect that the proximity effect helped
out its sound on toms too. Over the years the basic design varied, mostly by incorporating different switchable bass rolloffs. They all had the sci-fi aspect, though.
The MD 421 enjoyed popularity as a multipurpose dynamic mic for rock
bands until about 18 years ago, when Sennheiser replaced its most recent
incarnation with the MD 421 MkII model. That mic replaced "bright" with "very
bright", and the classic rock'n'roll sound was gone with the wind.
Recording reader Tony Sandoval found in an experiment (reported in
Recording's Talkback column, October 2016) that loading the Mk II with 500
ohms tamed the thinness, making the Mark II sound closer to the original microphone. Some of the original 421's good points are echoed by the E-V RE16 (though that mic doesn't have the MD-421's useful
proximity effect). Still, I'd like to see Sennheiser put out a "Classic Edition" replica of the original 421; it was simply too useful to
vanish completely.

Shure SM80
The SM80 was a variant of the popular (and still current) SM81, with an
omnidirectional electret capsule replacing the 81's cardioid electret capsule
on the identical body. The highpass filters on the head amp still functioned,
but since the omni capsule had no
proximity effect to fix, they now served
to filter out low-frequency room noise.
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RECORDING DECEMBER 2016

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