I got an AT2020 for Christmas (in the AT2041 pack) and decided to do some acoustical modifications to it to see what would happen. I got the idea from the mods Michael Joly does.
I took apart the mic, removed all the secondary screening and removed the foam/tape from the capsule. That's all I did. The body already has foam dampening, so that was already taken care of.
I recorded the samples by running the mic through a Mackie 1202VLZ3, tape outs to my M-Audio 24/96. I did my best to keep the mic recording position the same before and after. All the samples were recorded about 7" from the source, 12th fret on the guitar, with the voice also 3 or so inches above the capsule so I avoided singing directly at the now foamless capsule.
For the record, the AT2020 is a 16mm capsule (the same capsule as the AT2021, as near as I can tell) set in a larger housing in a side-address body with different electronics than the AT2021. It is by no means an LDC, as is often advertised by retailers (even though Audio-Technica makes it very clear it is not an LDC).
I wanted to post these to see what people thought. I haven't seen any mods for these mics listed on the board, so I thought I'd share my experience.
Cheers,
mike