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Originally Posted by ron florentine My Apex 460 should be here any day now.....I had Dave Thomas up in Canada do his mods to it ....I spent a touch more and went with the 6072 tube......with shipping and all mods came close to 400........Anyway if it a half descent multi patter tube mic it is well worth the money.........from a few people i spoke with the mods really change things sonically and makes it a great sounding mic.........time will tell!
Ron Florentine
Soundswest Studio |
A friend of mine just ordered two of these. He's a very good tech and often builds DIY mics. He's built Gyraf designs and theMojave among others. Here's his post to another forum regarding the 460.....................
[QUOTE] >Last week I received a pair of Apex 460 tube mics in the mail. If you
>recall, these are the same mics that Telefunken USA were spray painting
and
>selling for $1300. So I was intrigued. Were these $1300 mics that you
>could get for $229, or were they $229 mics that were being pawned off for
>$1300? For $229, I figured I couldn't go wrong, since it would still be
>worth it if I were to gut the mics and start from scratch. As a side note,
>after ordering the Apex mics for $229, I found the Nady 1150's new on eBay
>for $159 each. These mics are identical to the 460's. I bought a pair
of
>those too.
>
>I drew out a schematic and had _________ (name deleted here to protect the innocent) , my friend (and electronics mentor) look
>it over.
>
>
>It seems that there is a serious design error with this mic. The mic uses
a
>second gain stage, a cathode follower. This lowers the output impedance
>feeding the output transformer. With a cathode follower, a lower turns
>ratio transformer can be used, like a 4:1 or lower. This mic uses a 10:1,
>which is appropriate for a single gain stage and not for a cathode follower.
>I took one of the mics, took out the cathode follower stage, replaced the
>cheep capacitors ion the signal path, and removed the low pass shunt caps
at
>the xformer outputs. I also lowered the voltages to the heaters and the
>capsule as well.
>
>I find that when I still have the smell of solder in my nostrils, I am not
>very objective about the sound of my stuff. I recorded drum overheads,
>acoustic guitar, and vocals with a modded and unmodded mic. I had another
>buddy of mine (a full time audio engineer) do a blind listening of the
>stuff. Here is our verdict:
>
>The modded mic was better on all sources.
>The unmodded mic was unacceptable for all sources but the vocals, where
it
>was still less preferable to the modded one.
>On the drum overheads, the unmodded mic sounded to my buddy like "there
is a
>metal rod connected to the ride cymbal, which has it's other end connected
>to an ice-pick sticking in my ear".
>The modded mic was much smoother on the OH, but not up to snuff with the
>414ULS or 4050's that I usually use on OH.
>The modded mic still needs a little bit of work. Right now it sounds like
a
>decent Chinese mic. The capsule and/or output transformer are limiting
the
>mic's performance.
>
>The stock mic is an absolute TURD. Do not buy one unless you plan to do
>some work on it.[QUOTE]
It would be interesting to hear Telefunken's description of how their circuitry design differs from the aboive described miscreation.
