monsieurpr
Member
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2020
- Messages
- 13
Hello
One of the nicest thing with vintage microphones for DIY enthusiasts is that they tend to fail.
And when it occurs you can notice different manufacturers approaches for maintenance.
Here for example, a lovely Uher M538.
This very nice and balanced microphone suddenly sounds like it has a bandpass filter.
For those who don’t know this microphone, it was manufactured by AKG for Uher, using a dual capsule design borrowed from the AKG D200. Visually, the capsule is identical but the M538 lacks the humbucking coil.
Failure may come from one of the capsules or from the cross-over filter (my hope)
I need to open the microphone to check this. That’s where it starts to be interesting.
As on other specimens I could see on internet, I expected to be able to open the casing by removing the metal strips on the sides which I supposed would reveal mounting screws.
On the first picture one can notice the edge of the metal strip on the side of the casing. It covers the junction line of the two-halves of the body.
On the second picture, my M538: capsule is now glued, and the body is a single piece die-cast !
Obviously, at some time, someone decided to cut production costs at the expense of maintenance!
In addition, the high frequencies capsule casing is plastic instead of metal.
As capsules are now unrepairable, I am not that bothered about the glued capsule, but I still wonder about the cross-over filter and have no idea how to remove the big Tuchel connector to tests the electrical components.
Does anyone have an idea? It may be the same as on M537 the body of which looks similar.
And as can be seen on the third picture, there is scoop on the side of my M538 which may host the bass-cut filter switch when the body was used for the M537 (but this is just assumption on my side).
Can anyone help?
For reference, the last picture shows a TD200 capsule (from Reverb). ANother difference is that the TD200 has a larger resonator cavity as on the M538 (from what I can see through the scoop).
One of the nicest thing with vintage microphones for DIY enthusiasts is that they tend to fail.
And when it occurs you can notice different manufacturers approaches for maintenance.
Here for example, a lovely Uher M538.
This very nice and balanced microphone suddenly sounds like it has a bandpass filter.
For those who don’t know this microphone, it was manufactured by AKG for Uher, using a dual capsule design borrowed from the AKG D200. Visually, the capsule is identical but the M538 lacks the humbucking coil.
Failure may come from one of the capsules or from the cross-over filter (my hope)
I need to open the microphone to check this. That’s where it starts to be interesting.
As on other specimens I could see on internet, I expected to be able to open the casing by removing the metal strips on the sides which I supposed would reveal mounting screws.
On the first picture one can notice the edge of the metal strip on the side of the casing. It covers the junction line of the two-halves of the body.
On the second picture, my M538: capsule is now glued, and the body is a single piece die-cast !
Obviously, at some time, someone decided to cut production costs at the expense of maintenance!
In addition, the high frequencies capsule casing is plastic instead of metal.
As capsules are now unrepairable, I am not that bothered about the glued capsule, but I still wonder about the cross-over filter and have no idea how to remove the big Tuchel connector to tests the electrical components.
Does anyone have an idea? It may be the same as on M537 the body of which looks similar.
And as can be seen on the third picture, there is scoop on the side of my M538 which may host the bass-cut filter switch when the body was used for the M537 (but this is just assumption on my side).
Can anyone help?
For reference, the last picture shows a TD200 capsule (from Reverb). ANother difference is that the TD200 has a larger resonator cavity as on the M538 (from what I can see through the scoop).