Another update...
I was home on vacation visiting my family, so my dad helped me rig up a mod to mount the K7 (My dad is way more handy than I am, and has approximately 600% more tools than I do). The mod involved cutting a wooden dowel, recessing 2 screws into the bottom so I can screw the dowel onto the BeesNeez K7 mount (this way I don't have to super glue the wood to the mount), and then drilling a single screw hole in the bottom of the dowel, so that it can mount to the Tab/AMI plastic deck. It works, but it is very loose, and the capsule is swiveling/rattling around inside the headbasket. I guess the wood screw we had on hand is smaller than the AMI machine screw that came with the kit, and that's why it's not snug/tight. I need to figure out a way to tighten the mount so that the capsule remains steady. If anyone has any ideas, please do let me know.
Anyway, now that the mic is assembled (albeit, loose capsule mount), I fired her up and did some tests. The mic sounds fantastic! The sound quality level is on par with my Manley Reference Cardioid, just with a different tonality - more bass, not as bright. The U47 has much more proximity effect, and is less sibilant, as you would expect with less high end. I'm very pleased. It's not noisy, and sounds as expected. It's not distorted, or overly boomy, or whatever you might expect from a faulty build. I will post some samples in the near future. On acoustic guitar, the U47 sounds much more like the guitar in the room does than my Manley does. Very natural sound to it.
Here are some issues that I think you guys can chime in on.
-Does anyone know the exact correct height for the capsule in a U47? Once I figure out how to tighten the mount we modded, it looks like the top of the capsule is going to sit right at the horizontal bar on the headbasket. I'm wondering if I need a little bit more height to get to proper U47 mount height. We modded the mount to be the same height as the AMI-provided mount, but it still looks maybe a little short. Isn't the top 1/3rd of the capsule obscured/bisected by the bar?
-The U47 seems to have inverted polarity compared to my Manley and an SM57. Can I just flip the audio wires from the BV8 connecting to the Binder inside the mic, or is there a better way to fix this? I think that would be easier to do than modding the PSU.
-Polar pattern concerns: Omni works as expected. Bi-directional works as expected. There is a huge null on the sides of the mic in this mode, as you would expect. Cardioid: The mic is rejecting more from the side than it is from the rear. This may be normal, as it might be a psychoacoustic effect - the rear picks up a lot more bass than the side does, but its overall amplitude looks about the same graphically. It's hard to explain. This is not a fault of the remote-pattern switching either. I disconnected the rear diaphragm (true cardioid) and get the same behavior. (By the way, I did not notice any sound difference between remote-cardioid and true cardioid, but this was not a scientific test.)
The sm57 has a huge null in the rear of the mic, but it is dynamic, not an LDC. The Manley has somewhat similar behavior to the U47, but it is more in line with what you would expect. The Manley (k67-type capsule) doesn't have the same rejection as an sm57, and the rear has a bassy tone, but it sounds much more "rejected" than the rear of the U47 does. I'm not sure if this is typical of K47-type capsules, or maybe just the K7? I can't think of anything that would cause this circuit-wise, especially since I have the rear diaphragm disconnected completely, but please feel free to chime in. I sort of expected the rear of the U47 in cardioid mode to reject as much as the sides do in bi-directional mode.
Thanks
