Ne*m@nn T L M 103 pix

Hi,
Some photos of the inside of a 103, taken by Gus. Note the surface mount caps and the mis-centred diaphragm. What ever happened to quality control? For a mic of that price range I would want better than this.





:evil:

z50

I wish I did not see this :evil:
Anyway, thanks :wink:

I see it as saving me money - I won't be buying any mics from them.

I would hope at least to get a good quality controlled capsule. Might as well buy something cheap for modding.

Grrrrrrrr :roll: :shock: :evil:

My boss was having a chat to one of the managers at Digital Village in Acton yesterday, and he was saying that people have stopped buying the mid-range Neumanns and are plumping instead for the SEs. After seeing this, I think they may have some sort of reason for doing so :evil:
That really is sad, isn't it?!!! :sad:

chef

It is sad. Is it a deliberate policy?

I know a company that makes thermocouples and platinum resistance thermometers. Maybe you need to know a temperature to ±0.01 degC, or maybe just ±1 degree. So you can buy either grade A or grade B devices, depending on the accuracy you need. In fact both grades would be made in exactly the same way, but grade A's would be tested to a higher spec. If they failed to make grade A, the would go into the 'B' pile, or maybe the bin if they are bad.

That capsule makes me think of that kind of production process - so maybe the 'good' capsules go in their top end mics, and the TLM is 'B' spec......

That's also how computer CPU's are made - they make a batch, test a sample of them until they fall over, and stamp an appropriate speed rating on them.

Wow! Unbelievable. Maybe you could drop a 797 capsule in there and improve things a little. Sad, but probably true!

It just goes to show you the value of a name. Serves them right that all these Chinese mfgrs are starting to cash in on their business.

It's DIY from here on out for me and my buddies.

Shane

never really cared for the 103 anyhow :roll: or the 193 for that matter

Neumann was bought from Sennheiser some years ago. From that point on old mikes were built in the old facility, new ones - like TLM103 - at Sennheiser. This is real massproduction... Like scenaria said, who cares... The old mikes are the legendary ones.
Jens

I think of all of the neumanns except the u87 as Sennheiser/neumann. I think I read the u87 is built seperate from the rest of the microphones Maybe the u87 is the last of the neumanns.

That microphone is mine I bougt it a few years ago before I knew better. You should see the evil caps on the top of the board. The back of the capsule is like the 797 cardiod ones. It does not have a skin on the neumann one. I would guess 797 copying the 103 capsule design was a mistake who would think at that time that neumann would make a capsule cheaper and mess up the design.

The Brauner(not the KHE) and neumann(not the u87) build quality is not the best IMO in the standard stuff for the price you pay for it. I ask myself ever time I hear a KM184 what are they thinking are they deaf?

I will take some more pictures need to charge the battery. FWIW the picture are taken at 640 x 480 good lens make nice pictures.

The company whos build quality I like is Rode. I don't like how the capsules are "tuned". The electronic build, case and machine work are very good for the price some of the caps used I don't like. The pcb is well made and the soldering is good.

neumann is kinda like neve in the sense that they are ridding on their previous success when in fact they arent even close to what they put out in the past.


a vr60 is not the same as an 8078 nor is todays 87 verses one from earlier years... its commercialization... product... supply and demand and profit margins

Not that I particularly care to defend any company, but being on the other end of manufacturing and design, I thought I would point out a few things:

1. The photo angle (about 10 degrees off centre) and the shadow at the top exaggerates the amount the diaphragm is off. The diaphragm is off only by about 0.3mm. I've seen K47 diaphragms off that amount, and I have seen Chinese diaphragms off that amount. There is likely an acceptable tolerance and you must remember that this is a 1.2% error in the location of the gold - a very acceptable tolerance on this type of process. It is, however, likely on the edge of that tolerance. The same diaphragm error is harder to spot on a K67/87 capsule. The fewer number of holes in the K103 capsule makes it more obvious something isn't quite lined up.

When preparing tolerances, the importance of any parameter needs to be calculated. Having the gold off by even 0.5 mm or so is not likely to cause a significant shift of microphone performance, so its tolerance is set that wide. The backplate to diaphragm spacing is critical so the tolerance of that dimension is typically set to something like 3 microns or so. In manufacturing you need to do this otherwise the costs of building something go rapidly out of control. That being said, the visual aspect needs to be addressed as well, so sometimes you set a tolerance a bit tighter so things don't look wrong. This may be the case here. To me it does look a bit too much off-centre.

2. The SMT caps shown on the bottom side of the board are for the DC-DC converter to generate the 60 volt polarization voltage only. That is all they do. Ceramic is fine here. Actually, an SMT ceramic is preferable. They have less inductance than leaded caps, and that's what you need to avoid generating funny noises in these sort of circuits (charge pumps).

3. The TLM103 design has four capacitors of any significance in the signal path - the capsule coupling cap, the output cap, and two power supply filter caps. The coupling caps are through-hole - you can see them to the right of the photo. The other ceramics on top are small compensation caps that tame the gain of the amplifier in the MHz region - in the 47pF region. There may be some change in sound by changing these but I don't think it's unlikely. The capsule coupling cap is where I'd look at first, as well as the output cap.

4. You may be able to improve the sound slightly by changing the power supply output filter capacitors to something other than ceramics.

5. The backplate design of the TLM103 is unique and designed for the lack of a back diaphragm. It is not the same capsule as in a U87 or that sort of thing. In this case they cannot grade parts and use them in high or low end mics.

The picture angle makes it look better than it is. I will measure the offset

The 47Uf at 50 V look like some no name brand and are small compared to any 47uf at 50 V cap I have seen and measured. There is a sticker on the caps with ver 2 marked on it. The ceramic in the DC to DC is not a problem for me the electros are.

I will take more pictures of the top. The battery died in the camera and I did not finishing taking pictures.

There is something wrong with the 103 capsule design to my ears. Neumann should have used a 67 without the back gold spot. This is taking into account the price they charge for the microphone.

The dual skin ones with the 67/87 pattern sound better to me when in cardiod and the rear disconnected or just PET with no gold.

yeah Tony at SP says the same thing. he pulls new Neuman capsulse apart and says the tolerances are just not what they used to be. why spend money on thsat trash when you could get on the SP waiting list!

Some more pictures. Capsule again:



Top circuit board:



And the 'big' caps with a panasonic for scale:



z50

I have a 103 which I bought when they were brand new on the market. Its certainly not a BAD sounding mic by any stretch of the imagination. It also is certainly not some godly neumann mic but to be fair, it came with a price tag that reflects what it sounds like. It doesnt sound bad and its not garbage, I'll say that, but I'll also say the last time I plugged it in was probably over two and a half years. Its a mic that is REALLY picky about the preamp you plug it into, you've really got to patch it into everything you have to see where it sounds best when working with a singer. Thats my experience with it at least. That mic was used a lot for overheads on lots of grunge records in the early 90's. I always want to sell it, but never do and its nice to have around for that client that insists they need to use a neumann. Its great to set it up, put them at ease and then say, hey, why dont we try this, see what you think sounds better, less of a battle that way for them to use a mic they've never heard of. If there's a way to improve that mic, Id be way into it, but with all that surface mount I think Id be way suprised if there was a night and day difference. Its a cheap mic with an expensive name tag and a upper middle price tag. I wouldnt be upset if I got stuck on a desert island with it though, but there really isnt anything special about it, its just "ok".

dave

My main problem is the price. Yes it does sound better than alot of the stock china microphones. Neumann should know better all the older stuff had custom polystyernes and tants.

The offset in the skin is not what one would expect for the price. The use of cheap caps at this price point is a ?.

The cool thing is the laser trimmed deposited resitors on the ceramic board.

When I get to it 3 caps will be changed first.

The capsule coupling cap may well be a film capacitor - it looks different than the rest of the caps.

It's the white cap to the right of the capsule standoff. The bipolars transistors are BC850 and 860's, there's a dual diode in there (BAV99) and the two JFETs appear to be specially selected and configured as in the AKG C480.

Note that some of the cap values are unknown and some are likely wrong - I set them up just so I could simulate the design in SPICE. This is only the amp section, no DC-DC converter and no RF suppression stuff either.

http://www3.telus.net/~dulan/tlm103sch.pdf

I remember seeing a neumann catalogue and there were pic's of the factory from the good old days when woman did all the work as the men were fighting some war. Then the men came back from war. I wonder if thats what happened to quality controll. Just a thought!

I have a TLM 103 and an MBOX and I love both of them. They have been coping some slack lately on this here forum but they are what they are. Thats why I love them cause they do what they say there gunna do.

I have to admit that the best my 103 sounds is when it's plugged into my green pre.

Some times I wonder if it's better or different and I supposed thats different for each set of ears listening.[/quote]

Not to get too off-topic here, but:

a vr60 is not the same as an 8078

Click to expand...

Amen! If I hear the phrase 'vintage Neve VR/81/82 series! Get that great Neve sound!' one more time I'm gonna punch someone.

Unfortunately, as stated before, I feel we are witnessing the end result of companies whose only remaining commodity is their name. On the other hand, though, I have used the newer KM-184's with pleasant results but haven't yet had the occasion to try the 103.

Zach