ELA251M Clone max dB SPL?

[100WChris]

Hi,
i finally finished my ELA251M-Clone: Tim Campells Capsule (soooo good!!), NOS 6025A Tube from Christian Whitmore (also sooo good ) and AMI T14 transformer. The Mic sounds awesome.
Now i wonder what is the maximum sound pressure it can handle? Can i put it before a kikdrum, like an U47FET, or is this a bad idea?
Thanks and best regards
Chris

 

[kingkorg]

As long as you stay away from the hole the capsule should be fine.  You can ask Tim to be sure. However that AMI transformer has rather small core, and i doubt it would take a lot of loud low end without distorting. But you can just try, and see.

Quite important aspect would be the high value resistors you used in the circuit. If you used the grid resistor of 30Meg, and the capsule has say 50pF, you get low cut at 106hz if my math is right. So that would not be ideal for kick out mic. If you increase that resistor to 1G, you get full low end. But that is not Elam clone then, and might over saturate transformer even further.

IMHO saturated low end sounds terrible,  unless if you go for a special effect. I tend to saturate kicks, and bass instruments above 500hz, and leave the fundamentals as close to sine wave as possible. But that is just me.

 

[100WChris]

Thanks kingkorg, this is useful information!
regards
Chris