Tube Pencil Condenser

GroupDIY Audio Forum

Help Support GroupDIY Audio Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

baadc0de

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 9, 2009
Messages
797
Location
Europe
I'm looking to build a pair of tube pencil condensers for my studio. Do you people have any recommendations for a host body, schematics and/or capsules that I should try?

It's mostly for drum overheads, guitars, pianos, upright basses, that sort of thing..
 
I know Advanced Audio sells reasonably priced mics.  Maybe an option would be to grab those and possibly tweak them a little if you can't find a good option to build from ground up.  You need to email Dave about them because he doesn't have them listed online.

 
Yes, I was looking at various options, including Groove Tubes, Chameleon Labs etc.. so I really might pick one of those ultimately, but the question remains because the "inquiring minds want to know"

Maybe it even isn't economical, but how would you people go about it?
 
How about the royer mod 2? That seems to be a popular option for SDC's. You could grab a pair of Apex 180's for cheap. Although your at the mercy of the capsules as I don't think they are easily upgradeable. I am working on a pair of 180's right now, and considering trying to pop the capsule out of the housing so I can do a little machining.

If you can find some Oktava mk 012's for cheap, that might be a good option. Better capsules to work with.
 
Oktava mk 012 is good recommendation.
Another candidate is MXL603.  I made tube mod using 6S6B tube - works fine! Although, Oktava has better capsule.
Even better is to find Gefell MV691 or 692 and M94 capsules - they are tube modable too.
 
Did a pair of MXL 603's into the Royer Mod.  Why buy the same thing as his M-100 tube mic for $800 EACH?  The total invested in the MXL mics, parts and my time was perhaps $400 FOR A PAIR!  Got a pair of MXL 993's I am going to chop next.  I will keep you posted. 
 
There was a thread... Guerilla mic bodies or something...

Someone used a PAD (just remove the pad components) insert as the threaded coupler between their DIY copper body and the capsule... Looked nice too.

I just ordered 20x 5840's. Just needed a couple for doing two M49 style circuits in a pair of apex 460 bodies with some TAB trafo's. I'll probably have some leftovers and plan to use them in various royer'ish-mod applications for some mic's I have that don't see much use.

I may try to make a head-amp with a 5840 that allows me to screw my KM184 capsule in using this method. That may even make the 184's even more useful!

Cheers,
jb
 
I think you will have most fun modding a gefell mv691.. the capsules are great, electronics sucks, so to take it out is anyway a good idea.

AAAAND they allready have a 5 pin connector, you'll probably end up with something pretty close to a neumann km54
 
Yeah, Gefell bodies are great for tube mods. The transformer has 4.5:1 ratio, but if you wire secondaries in parallel you have a nice 9:1 trafo. There is modded MV692 with 6S6B russian submini tube.

Another cool option is convert MXL603 circuit to KM84. Works great. 
 

Attachments

  • 3.jpg
    3.jpg
    70.4 KB · Views: 106
The circuit design in the Gefell mv69x is fine.  They sometimes just need some part(s)help.  A designer tech etc would know what to do with the stock circuit.

 
Back
Top