keep your mics in tyvek if your studio is at 45%. that way the moisture from use can evaporate out but it won't get dry enough to damage the capsule. desiccate above 70% rh.
Here's one example:
oh yes. in low humidity, the mylar can no longer discharge environmental static and can stick to the plate even without being hooked up to anything. this is the reason behind the little plastic dots on the backplates of vintage neumann capsules. drove them bananas.
Can you show an actual example to substantiate this?
I'll have to pick a sacrifice Neumann capsule to show this with...
It's difficult to notice this happening actively, usually I notice telltale signs of this in capsules that have been in storage lockers over the winter. It leaves these weird marks. I've seen this happen to two Neumann capsules so far live but I don't leave them like that and I've pretty long since started humidity climate controlling my office so it hasn't happened in a minute. Maybe someone else has pictures? There's nothing I can do to prove this other than hearsay or destroying an existing capsule to show you
It's not very common in mine either to be fair. The set of circumstances that need to happen are very specific. So far this has happened to approximately two out of about 2500. Not a tremendous amount but enough to be annoying
It's also important to understand that these problems compound. The membrane getting permanently stuck to the back plate from PSU failure is more likely the lower the humidity gets. These are not strictly speaking separate problems in the first place. There's also the vacuum effect that makes this significantly more likely in k47 capsules then in k67's that have a rather large central vent of course. This is one of a few reasons why they tried so many ways to put a hole into the M7. Though PVC is way less prone to this
This I understand. It's difficult to walk through all the subtle changes made to try to avoid this problem without units on hand to show what I mean. There's definitely a progression of getting more and more frustrated about this problem (the membrane sucking into the back plate in general, not just from environmental static but also PSU failure) in the design of the capsules over time. I'll try and get some non-destructive examples together. I definitely don't want to contribute to spreading misinformation. Klaus accidentally implied once that all k67 chamber spacers are 40 micron and it made at least two Boutique capsule manufacturers that I've met in the wild not check. I don't want to cause something like that
To clarify, I would have used one of the capsules that this has already happened to. I kept one of them that it happened to to document the damage haha. I wouldn't just a nuke a random perfectly working capsule, not that it affects performance much. Also, of course can be related to diaphragm conditioning, but why do you think they condition the diaphragm the way they do in the first place? "this couldn't happen to Neumann capsules because of how they precondition their diaphragms"/ have higher tension is a bit like saying "how could anyone ever die of polio? There's a polio vaccine!" Yes. A polio vaccine designed to prevent polio. Before which, polio was prevalent. Which is what prompted them to develop a polio vaccine. You know? I'm not saying this problem is common in current Neumann capsules. It happens to a couple vintage Neumann capsules capsules and also a couple of my capsules, because they are clones of vintage capsules. They are exact clones and that includes having all of the problems that the vintage capsules had, something that I am not denying. Heck, my lower tension units that are more prone to this problem come with a literal disclaimer card:
This is also something I want to touch on because I didn't say it was common. I said it bugged them. Those are two super different statements. Just because it bugged them so much that they went through a half dozen revisions to the capsule to solve the problem does not mean it was common. It just means they're eccentric. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make 20 Micron thick plastic dots on a brass back plate? Doing that in the first place is completely insane. This happening to one of every couple thousand or even 10,000 capsules is an engineering problem and a point of pride to Neumann. At least that's the impression that I got. I have no confirmation of their motivation. Though I relate if that's it. This problem happening twice ever in the 5-year history of my production was enough for me to print disclaimer cards. Broadly I feel like at least one of the engineers at neumann was the same type of person as me. Judging from the very strange and difficult solutions they came up with for this problem. That's part of what makes me so passionate about this! The people who worked on these products were so over the top. I feel a kinship looking at this occasionally wild and wacky nonsense. Do they need to cut the chamber gap in the k103 with a lathe? Of course not! That's completely insane! But it's fun. They're having fun! I'm having fun. I firmly believe that when they went through revisions trying to solve this problem, they were doing it mostly for fun. I think I might have not communicated very effectively here.
