Patent on mic capsule amplifier?

I was googling for a 421 microphone mount and stumbled upon this: http://www.google.com/patents?id=KSCJAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&output=html_text
I don't know much about analyzing patent claims, so for those that do, is this really novel enough for a patent? It's not my intent to offend the author, I'm just genuinely curious.

The patent paper is a general overview of background and an awfully specific implementation (with magazine reviews!!).

What the patent monopoly covers is only the last page, "What is claimed...", minus anything obvious to one versed in the art and minus anything which can be shown to be covered in older patents or published information.

Many of the claimed claims are old-hat.

The topology is an obvious combination of things widely used in the field.

Some claims are so specifically narrow as to be trivially avoided. "Idss... between 1ma and 0.8ma".... so select your design for Idss of 0.75ma, or argue that such specific narrow claims are moot.

There's a few points which are novel to me.

While this is not a Design patent, it seems that the only way to really run afoul of it is to copy their commercial product exactly.

I am NOT a lawyer.