A bit of light-hearted fun for the folk who are interested in microphones. I was hunting for a mic this afternoon and realised I had a few that were either old or less common - 17 mics arranged from tallest to shortest. I've blobbed out identifying marks to a degree. Some should be very easy - but getting 17 would be pretty hard I think?
5 are over 20 years old for certain and two of them I bought in the 70s - so probably 45 years old!
A higher res image is https://www.eastanglianradio.com/QUIZ-QUESTIONS.jpg
The answers are here - https://www.eastanglianradio.com/QUIZ-ANSWERS.jpg
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Number 12 is an odd one - they often pop up on ebay and I bought
Number 12 is an odd one - they often pop up on ebay and I bought this (or probably this one as I have 4, and this is the most scratched) back in the 70s - it was really popular in posh churches because it looks so nice - the brushed finish and the nice looking grill. As a voice mic you'd see them on pulpits, on goosenecks but I never thought they sounded very nice on voice. I've discovered they make rather nice drum overheads and for a dynamic are quite bright sounding. 2,3 and 8 are hand held omni - very rare things now for studios, but great for interviews which is why 2 and 3 are very long! Number 16 is my very first brand new dynamic bought for me to use. It cost me nearly a weeks wages. Oddly, they're cheaper now in real terms than back then. I'm a bit of a sucker for hand held mics, and I bought during lockdown 4 Neumanns which I really like, after buying one as a test. The rest of the band use Beta 58s - and I have always used an 86 which suits my voice better. The irony being two of the band are now ill - one minor but the other very seriously so we've retired! I'll use them over the summer on events I hope, so I might recoup the investment? 5 and 6 sound very similar apart from the KSM8 not having proximity effect, but I'd hoped it would sound like the other mics with no or little proximity effect and it doesn't. Close in it's still quite hard sounding and not warm like I expected. The KSM9 is quite nice although the switch for the two patterns is inside under the windshield which is a bit inconvenient. The Neumanns are clean and bright. Nice on guitars. In the studio, I still go for the 414 when I have to mic something new to me, it rarely fails to work well. I use the 112 on kick drum because for my type of recordings I prefer it to the old D12 or the other bug thuddy ones, and it's quite good, but a bit insensitive on double bass. Beta57s I've never got one with - preferring the old 57. Only recently have I started to use the old 451/CK8 combination for video work and I quite like it. I have others with omni and cardioid capsules and some extension tubes I bought for opera soloists, but never used yet. We do video too, so often the bigger, better mics are also the ugliest! I'll dig some other mics out that I have but can't find at the moment.
Well, at least I had half of them...
Well, at least I had half of them...