New Mic

So we discovered the other day that our backup microphone is dead. We'd had trouble with it ever since we got it. Maybe we should have sent it back for repair but we never did. And now c'est mort.

We use these Oktava mics (the working one I still have is silver). And we only get them from the Sound Room. They're $249 now. I think back in the olden days they were under two hundred bucks.

I discovered that the dead one's problem was in its preamp (by swapping capsules I determined that the capsule with it was OK.) But the capsule on further inspection was just a cardioid pattern, not the hypercardioid which is a bit better at rejecting off-axis noises.

This isn't the first Oktava I've lost. Another one was lost in a mishap a while ago. And man -- looking at my working one -- it's pretty well beat up. But the mics sound great. They're arguably flatter and smoother sounding that the Schoeps (whether that's good or bad for dialog is a matter of taste). And Schoeps can get busted too -- and cost a heck of a lot more when they do.

So I ordered a new one. And I'm complaining because I sure could have used that money to put to a guitar amplifier... ;-) But it would really really really suck if the one working one went down during a shoot and we had no replacement.

I do have a small pile of those -10dB pads which screw in-between the capsule and the preamp body. Well, OK. I have three of them. Soon I'll have four.

P.S. That picture looks like the capsule is only cardioid, doesn't it? Well, when we get the new one we'll see if the response is the same as my silver one -- which has a picture of a hypercardioid response on the side of the capsule.