Hi

I own a RODE NTK mic, and am not that happy with the sound. It's brittle, and not very focused.

I would love to get a better mic, but the budget is a little restrictive. So instead, I ordered a replacement tube for the mic, in the hope that I could improve the sound.

The tube I chose was a NOS Philips E88CC/6922 SQ from Holland.

I recorded two test tracks - one with the old tube, and then the new to compare any sound difference (which I believe is very apparent).

Here's the gear I used:

- Maton Australian Series Jumbo Acoustic Guitar (with month old strings)
- RODE NTK mic
- Sebatron vmp-2000e preamp
- LynxOne audio card
- Cubase SX (24bit, 44.1k project)

Here's what I did:

- I set up the mic (with the stock standard Chine tube) through the pre, and left them both turned on for about 45mins, to allow the tubes to warm up.
-I set the preamp controls to transparent, neutral settings, with no eq and low tube gain.
- I set the mic up a foot away from the guitar, pointed between the soundhole and beginning of the neck.
- I recorded a basic strumming pattern.
- turned off the mic, and replaced the tube with the NOS Philips one.
- set up the mic in exactly the same position, turned the mic on, and left it to warm up for 45mins.
- repeated the recording process, same strum, same position, same distance from mic.

I applied no compression, eq, and did not normalise the files, so you can hear volume diferences.

I coverted the 24bit files to 16bit with dither etc.

I then used Lame to convert the tracks to 320k mp3s

I'm not going to say what I think the differences are, because I want to hear what you all think!

I have never been up close and personal with a highend mic, like Nueman etc. How does the NTK with the new tube compare?

Here are the links:

Philips - http://people.aapt.net.au/~celebritymusic/TubeX.mp3

Chinese - http://people.aapt.net.au/~celebritymusic/TubeY.mp3

Shaun
http://www.gilbert.net.au