As best I can remember:
I'm actually the one responsible for the gut pic of the E-100 in the OP; it's from
my blog.
In any case, I have several e22S and like them very much, but find that they sound pretty different from any other SDC I've used. And they also sound nothing like any other mic that uses an EM21 capsule. While I would guess that Josephson selects/tunes and/or modifies the capsules that go into the e22S, I think the capsule housing is probably the biggest factor in the unique sound.
Like the
aforementioned Schoeps V4U, the e22S has a longer path around to the back of the capsule. In my experience (having neither a published polar plot for reference nor the equipment to generate one), the e22S does narrow significantly in the treble and develops a rear lobe in the top two octaves. I remember talking into the back of it inside a super-dead vocal booth one time, and the sound was basically all sibilance, whereas at 90 degrees it was very muffled and dark sounding. On drum shells, the cymbal bleed is decidedly darker than any other condenser I have used. So in general I think that it behaves a little like an LDC at higher frequencies.
As to the question of whether the "tube" housing creates a notch (re:
this post), it doesn't that I can hear or measure. There *is* a small dip in response around 4-5kHz, which I first noticed while doing comparisons of reamped distorted guitar tracks. Pointing the e22S at my desktop monitors playing pink noise (1/24 octave resolution, 100x average), that dip is visible but almost insignificant. There's certainly not a huge deep notch. But I do wonder if the small dip around 5kHz is a big part of why I like the mic on guitar cabs as much as I do -- it takes some of the 'harsh' out of the typical peak that most guitar speakers have around 4-5kHz. And if the treble is narrower like an LDC, and then maybe it's receiving treble energy from a relatively smaller portion of the cone, reducing some of the weird high-frequency phasing artifacts that I hear whenever I try a "normal" SDC close up on a cab.
I also did a reamp test of the e22S vs the Equitek E-100, which is posted here. Obviously they are not much alike. Since neither circuit does any EQ that I can see, then if they really use the same capsule, differences must be down to housing, tuning, and/or modification. But again, my bet is on [mostly] the capsule housing -- which is custom machined (in California) and so probably the most expensive component of the mic anyway.
