Thanks for the replies. NY Dave... My studio is in Bushwick, in fact and I live here too. Love the warriors reference. Its one of the movies I have here for people to watch when they are bored.
In reference to the C412 mics... They have the orig mics and the were just crappy sounding compared to most other lg dia mics I have and knew that oughtn't be the case. They both have CK12 capsules and yes the idea was to build elams using the capsules, putting teflons in the 412s and evilbaying them. I just didn't / don't have the funds right now. Klause wanted a shitload to do it - and yes I understand that for those who can make that kind of commitment it is money well spent. I opted to send them to Tracy Korby who has a pretty good rep. But I have to say, I have had nothing but bad luck with tracy.
First I bought an m49 through him that had his stamp on it. It was my first "big" mic in my studio and compared to other things sounded pretty nice. I started getting better mics in my place and it started to pale. I had some engineers through here and they didn't think that it was all that healthy. I sent it to someone else and they told me the capsule was not healthy and he cleaned it but it was too screwed up. We put a new K47 capsule in it and now it sounds quite impressive and I understand what is so special about it. ...first bad experience.
I sent Tracy my 412's and said he could go through em and make em amazing for a few hundred bucks... much cheaper than going with Klause. I know there isn't that much to them so I figured worth the gamble to perhaps save $4000 or so vs. the Heyne method. (Like I said, I just don't have it.)
So first they came back and they were super dull sounding. I mean realllly dull, lifeless. With those capsules I was shocked - they were borderline dead sounding and anyone familiar with that capsule knows that is should not be the case. I thought to myself, what is wrong with this dude? I can think of no one who would like these mics the way they are. We spoke about it. He said he didn't know what the story was and he asked for them back. I sent them, he worked on them and I got them back. I hooked em up and they had become about the brightest mic I have heard (I have an Elam 250 too) and again I was dissapointed.
So I am finished with Korby. Very dissapointed too javascript:emoticon('
'). I am worried that he did something irreparable to the beautiful capsules, so I thought I would take matters into my own hands and with my tech put some new electronics in them to see what is what. Hopefully, he made his changes to the electronics and didn't futz with the capsules. So I thought I would post to some of the super talented folks here to see what folks had done with their mics coming up with cool circuitry.
I had mentioned simple desgin because it is my (and other too) that the fewer electronics the better the desgin. Perhaps a better transformer in there would be better?
Let me just say I have bee na observer here for sometime and really appreciate people sharing their intellect and experience. Y'all rock!
Semi-unrelated: I have been engaged with some very eye opening AB testing of gear with my tech/friend who is also a designer. At some point he/I will share our experience...things like IC vs. Discrete and Transformer tests.
So, thanks for chiming in guys, have a great day
All the best,
joshua