A properly maintained KM84 is best for everything.

Thanks Dave, Is the 184 a bit too bright?

hey, have you ever compared the KM84 to Mojave MA-101fet or MA-100 by chance?

I have not heard any of the Mojave line.

As for the KM184, I dont think they are as overly hyped as some people say they are. They're very very accurate.

I agree with Dave. The KM184 is not nearly as bad as GS would have you believe. The KM84 is better IMO, but the KM184 is still very very respectable. I've been wanting a set of the 140's with various capsules. But I digress.

The Mojave M100 pair is next years scheduled purchase. Because I'm a whore for mic's and not because I need them.

exactly why I'm asking here lol, so much crap posting on GS, hard to sift through it all.

I have one MA 100 but want the pair as I am a serious mic addict and its getting worse. Building up the cabinet for my remote business and my dream, Burns Lake Studio. Its been 10 years in the making and a lot of work. Its so quite there, you can hear just space and loons at night from a distance. Maybe thats all in my head lol, I am getting older... hmmm...

Thanks guys, good to hear.

Davedog, post: 357965 wrote: A properly maintained KM84 is best for everything.

Dave, what do you mean "properly maintained"?

audiokid, post: 358008 wrote: Dave, what do you mean "properly maintained"?

He means not actually using the microphone as a weapon against a deranged drummer...unless it's an SM57.

Any great mic , especially older condensers, need a cleaning and a tune-up after a while.

As far as drummers, if their eyeballs are spinning opposite directions I generally wont let them even sit down behind the kit.....

All mine are very new but when that time comes, other that the obvious screen, what are you able to clean and what methods?

Thanks!

Probably because it is no longer produced. Afaik, it has been replaced by the KM 184, which is a very good allround mic ( for a small diaphrag condenser).
It produces a clear sound, but not really too bright. The recorded audio can be quite well adjusted with a decent EQ.

I offer a special mic-rejuvenation service to all of the RO folks. Just send those Neumanns, Sennheisers, DPA's, RE-20's, and 4060's to me and I'll make sure that they get well taken care of...:) No WD-40 used here!!!

This is a job not recommended for untrained DIYers! I send mine out to the Guru Of Neumanns, Mr. Klaus Heyne. Yeah, it costs money but in the long run it gives your gear a really long shelf life. I ALWAYS store the U87 with a plastic cover over the grill and I rotate the dessicant regularly. I also use a high quality Popper-Stopper so very little, if any, spit gets attached to the membrane. When I bought it, this mic had been poorly maintained and was a mess. Needless to say I didnt pay a lot for it....but I knew it well having been a part of the studio it came from....so I guess it was partly my mess!!! TBS, Klaus restored it to its original German specs, cleaned it, and now its incrdibly great sounding....even better than when it was a newer mic. Since its an older mic, it had some of the modifications that Gotham put in to Neumanns while they were the importers in the 60's,70's and 80's...something about American consoles not being able to handle the output from the U87....Klaus removed these items as part of the service.

All I can say is wow....everytime I use it. Those of you who have heard some of my production on full releases know just how complete the vocal sounds are.

My point is, a high-end piece has to be maintained in order to retain its magic that makes it what it is and what makes it so much more desireable than off-the-shelf gear found today.

I dont want to say old gear is better....its generally not unless its maintained to a high degree....but there is a certain depth and a completeness (for lack of a better term) in some elderly gear that you simply cant get with new components or a string of data written to simulate...

A perfect example would be a couple of SM57's I have left over from a PA I owned back in the day...both from the early 70's ...both UnidyneIII's....both put out a full 150 mv's more than a newer 57....can you say ROBUST 57 sound? Would I try and fix this? I dont care if they're wrong, they are what they are. I had 20 of em. These are the two I kept.

Sometimes the old stuff is better because its ready to blow up!

20 years when I started my remote truck, I purchased a couple of pairs of used Neumann's. A couple of KM 86's couple of U 87's. All of which were were from the earliest, original first releases of the 1970's or somewhere thereabouts. At that time, I had contacted Joe Luong over at Gotham audio in NYC since we had both taken the Ampex MM 1100 servicing authorization course at the Barbizon Plaza Hotel in NYC. He indicated to me the best way to clean the capsule membrane was with distilled water & a small camel hair paintbrush to clean the crud off of the diaphragms. And brother was there plenty of crud on those electrostatic air cleaning capsules. It was disgusting! On both pairs, I was also able to rotate the capsules front to back. This worked well since it was mostly the front facing capsules that were the most crudded up. With the rear facing capsules having had the least amount of use damage. You can't get away with this on other microphones that have the tailored & different sounding front & back capsule. But that's not the case for the 86's & 87's/67's. Remember, that gold spluttering is barely one molecule thick and is very easy to displace too much of it when cleaning. So be careful.

Microphones circa 1971
Mx. Remy Ann David