Monoprice Stage Right SC100 Pencil Condenser pair with 4 capsules (2 cardioid, 2 omni) for 52.49 USD

[Paul W]

Has anyone tried the Monoprice SC100 pencil condensers, or know something they're a rebadged version of? They come with omni and cardioid capsules for a mere $52.49 (USD) right now, from Amazon, Target, or Walmart (I'm in the US, don't know about availability elsewhere). That's for a pair, so 4 capsules.

From a screen capture of the printing on the box from a YouTube review video, it appears that they allege 14 dB self noise, -38 dB sensitivity, max SPL of 135 dB, 80 dB, 16mm capsules.

The bodies don't appear to have vents, so I guess the cardioids at least are not interchangeable with mics that have vents behind the capsule.

 

[k brown]

I posted about the SC100 SDCs and the LC100 LDCs here:
https://groupdiy.com/threads/monoprice-lc100.82082/

They both have the same circuits, just different size/shape boards. Basically Schoeps-style circuit w/o voltage multiplier for polarization voltage, as they are electret capsules. Boards and components are of pretty high quality, actually. Capsules are cheap Transound, or knockoffs thereof. I found the cardioids to be useless, and threw them away; the omnis a bit better, but quite bright. Almost all the noise is from the capsules.

I just re-housed the boards as transformerless power modules for the many mics I have that use the same 2SK660 FET.

 

[Icantthinkofaname]

I posted about the SC100 SDCs and the LC100 LDCs here:
https://groupdiy.com/threads/monoprice-lc100.82082/

They both have the same circuits, just different size/shape boards. Basically Schoeps-style circuit w/o voltage multiplier for polarization voltage, as they are electret capsules. Boards and components are of pretty high quality, actually. Capsules are cheap Transound, or knockoffs thereof. I found the cardioids to be useless, and threw them away; the omnis a bit better, but quite bright. Almost all the noise is from the capsules.

I just re-housed the boards as transformerless power modules for the many mics I have that use the same 2SK660 FET.

That makes sense, I had these as the iSK Little Gem, they came with super cardioid caps. IIRC the iSK version was full of quality components, weak point seemed to be the capsules there too.

 

[RCAguy]

I posted about the SC100 SDCs and the LC100 LDCs here:
https://groupdiy.com/threads/monoprice-lc100.82082/

They both have the same circuits, just different size/shape boards. Basically Schoeps-style circuit w/o voltage multiplier for polarization voltage, as they are electret capsules. Boards and components are of pretty high quality, actually. Capsules are cheap Transound, or knockoffs thereof. I found the cardioids to be useless, and threw them away; the omnis a bit better, but quite bright. Almost all the noise is from the capsules.

I just re-housed the boards as transformerless power modules for the many mics I have that use the same 2SK660 FET.

Reminds me of the old AKG C451 series (I have eight, all still working, with a dozen interchangeable capsules), before the B with a fixed cardioid. Any link to full specs for the SC100, including plots of frequency responses and polar patterns?

Anyone still using AKG-C451E series?

 

[RCAguy]

A pair if SC100s may work to make a fig8, as discussed in that thread.

 

[k brown]

Reminds me of the old AKG C451 series (I have eight of them, all still working, with a dozen interchangeable capsules), before the B with a fixed cardioid. Any link to full specs for the SC100, including plots of frequency responses and polar patterns?

Not worth doing, the capsules are just cheapies.

 

[RCAguy]

Not worth doing, the capsules are just cheapies.

Too bad - that’s why they don’t publish curves - we’d want good ones for the omni+cardioid=fig8 trick.