All condensers, great and small… This is more than just some sales slogan scrawled on a roadside billboard we'd spy through the windshield of the Harpmobile. The family of Condenser Microphones (also known as capacitance or electrostatic microphones) encompasses some of the very biggest and certainly some of the smallest creatures in the Microphone Kingdom. It is a family as varied and flexible as it is revered. Historically significant as well as artistically renowned, among them are some of the newer-fangled Misfits to find their way into the realm of Saint Harmonica.
As we learned during our last joyride in the Harpmobile, the Ribbon and Condenser mic technologies share parallel timeframes and paths of development. At least on this side of the Atlantic. Europe became the domain of the Condenser once Ribbon mics found higher favor and more prevalence in the Americas during the '30's and '40's. Cultivation and continued development of the Condenser microphone by legendary names in audio such as Neumann, Sennheiser, AKG, and Telefunken have added immeasurably to the Sonic Universe. For instance, the world of recorded sound and music would simply not exist as we know it without them. Why? Because of their capability to accurately render an astonishingly wide frequency spectrum with the highest degree of dynamic sensitivity: They can sound really REAL, as in realistic. It's not unusual to find Condenser mics with response curves running from 20 all the way through 20,000 cycles per second. This ranges below AND above that of human hearing. Compare these numbers to the frequency response of the state-of-the-art Carbon mics in use only a decade earlier (70 to10K Hz) and you begin to get an idea of the level of sonic improvement they represented … AND, like their Ribbon counterparts, Condensers could be utilized to expressively impart an interpretive character of their own into the program material they transduced. The audio artist's paintbrush, if you will…
They achieve their sensitivity by way of an extremely thin membrane -in some cases barely a micron in thickness (think super eardrum)- electronically charged and positioned in front of a charged backing plate of opposite polarity (typically 48VDC). Air pressure varies the capacitance between the diaphragm/membrane and the backing plate which is then converted into output voltage and hence, amplified back into audio data. As before, may I recommend a bit of tech homework for a more accurate description of the principles involved.
"HEY FRITZ! WHAT ABOUT OUR MISSISSIPPI SAXOPHONE?" No, I haven't forgotten. I'm just distracted by the enormity of the subject… The Condenser mics that offered the most significant alternative to harp players began their conquest by revolutionizing broadcast journalism: The Electret Condenser group of miniaturized microphones (most notably Sony's ECM-50) put a new level of sound quality into TV field reporting and tie-tack on-camera audio. Able to utilize tiny low voltage on-board batteries to charge their capsules, they were no longer tethered to AC-dependant 48VDC power supplies. This meant a new level of portability in the field… AND on STAGE! Suddenly there were mics the size of Chapstick caps to experiment with. Noise-canceling capsules that could be matched with all manner of modern audio gear. A Brave New World of Tin Sandwich experimentation was at hand! Who would meet this challenge?
On the bus, off the bus… Next time, on THE MIC BENCH.
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For pictures and descriptions of most of the microphones listed visit
http://www.harmonicamasterclass.com/vintage_collection.htm
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To contact Fritz for his Custom Mics or Repair email him at
harpmicman@earthlink.net
