Chinese U47 Donor? BaiFeLi V47

[Gus]

I would try a good 3819 instead of the 170 and add a 1meg bias trim

 

[Wordsushi]

And lastly, this seems odd to me. I forgot to mention that when I first plugged it in, I would get ground hum when I touched the body shell, so I sanded down the top and bottom lip of the shell and that fixed it, but now when I touch the badge, and only when I touch the badge, I get ground hum.

 

[Khron]

I would try a good 3819 instead of the 170 and add a 1meg bias trim

A "good 3819", that you can't find a usable one new of, or a decently priced "NOS" one...

 

[RuudNL]

No guarantee that the full 76.2 V. will be on the capsule.
I mention this, because I see four 51 M.Ohm resistors on the PCB near SW1.
Sometimes they split the voltage in a multipattern microphone.
(See attachment.)

 

[Wordsushi]

Update. So I contacted two other people on my discord server who have recently purchased the BFL V47 and all of us have the same phase reversal issue, so it would appear likely that the XLR 2/3 printing on the board is erroneous.

 

[Wordsushi]

No guarantee that the full 76.2 V. will be on the capsule.
I mention this, because I see four 51 M.Ohm resistors on the PCB near SW1.
Sometimes they split the voltage in a multipattern microphone.
(See attachment.)

I bet you're right. I can't imagine they're using capsules that could handle a steady 76v.

 

[RuudNL]

About the polarity ('phase') reversal:
I have noticed this before on some Russian microphones.
It is all a question what your 'standard' is.
Also some old AKG microphones (D190) had a different polarity than what we consider now as 'standard'.
I still remember the pin 2/pin 3 discussion many years ago: in Europe pin 2 was 'hot', but in the USA pin 3 was 'hot'.
Fortunately it isn't very complicated to swap the wires connected to pins 2 and 3!

 

[Wordsushi]

I remember reading that, too. I fear here it's more of a mistake since their other mics that I've tried have pins 2 and 3 wired correctly. They just straight up botched this one. I swapped the wires, which took a minute. At least it'll make a decent donor platform.

Still, I want to know why there's a ground hum only when I touch the badge in the middle of the shell.

If anyone has any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them. There was a hum when I touched the shell until I sanded off the paint from the upper and lower lip of the shell to expose the metal underneath, but this thing with just the badge is odd.

 

[neowalla]

I don't like Telefunken brand name owners (whom have nothing to do with historical Telefunken) rebranding chinese microphones and selling for 10x the price making false, indirect connections to Neumann and others by exploiting couple of numbers and letters.

Vintage Telefunken mics were more less rebrands of AKG and Neumann which is no longer the case. Hence i don't see much value even in modern Telefunken u47, elam, c12 models they sell. They are not worth a dime above the sum of the parts they used. Modern Telefunken is a rip-off of the European heritage. And the fact capsules, transformers in higher end models are made in USA doesn't help either, as it's yet again just a rip-off of the originals without any consent from the original manufacturers. Just exploitation of expired patents. High end Behringer business model.

Austrian Audio is something else, there's no chinese clone besides couple which roughly cosmetically resemble the AA ones.

Sounds like maybe they should be called Smellinfunken!

 

[Wordsushi]

Turns out the BFL V47 makes for a really great donor mic with just a capsule swap. Arienne Audio Flat K47 makes for some serious bang-for-your-buck but you have to swap out the mount. Also, as it turns out, over at the discord server I use for my channel, we have currently identified FIVE different V47s, shipped to 4 separate people that all phase reversed. So, my guess is that it probably is due to a misprint on the PCB.