Richard Knoppow wrote:
My one and only Turner mic is a 999, a low impedance
dynamic. I came into a windfall of good impedance matching
transformers (UTC 01 Ouncers) so matching is no problem. Its
a decent mic but may not be representative since I had to
remove a dent from the diaphragm. This can be done with
sticky tape and great care. The mic sounds good, less rise
in the high end than my Electro-Voice 635. I think this is
probably the original sound.

The 252 definitely has a serious rise on-axis and it's kind of
grating-sounding. That comes across nicely in a pileup.

Turner seems to be the only one of the original big
four makers of PA mics that did not survive. Astatic,
Electro-Voice, and Shure Brothers all managed to navigate
the vicissitudes of life.
American Microphone was another company who did not
survive. Their last line of mics was a valiant attempt to
break into the high quality broadcast and recording market
but their technology left a lot to be desired. I have a
couple of their high-end cardioid mics.

Are they any good? I remember American Microphone trying really hard
to sell into the broadcast market with really cool-looking handheld omni
mikes. The chief engineer of the radio station I worked for dismissed
them all as "crap that's designed to look nice on TV."

A friend had a recording made on his Ampex part of
which was done with an experimental American pressure mic
intended for high quality recording and another section with
a "Telefunken" mic, actually a Scheops 201-M. No comparison,
the American mic made all the instruments sound like they
were made of paper boxes. The Schoeps mic is the one that
actually established Telefunken's reputation and is the mic
used for the Mercury Records "Living Presence" series.
The cardioid used a ribbon element with a dynamic just
under it. It has decent patterns in one plane going
horizontally around the mic but, of course, there is no
match whatsoever in the vertical plane and very poor
directivity. Actually, Brush made a similar microphone in
the mid or late 1930s, essentially an RCA Junior Velocity
mic with a Brush crystal element fixed to the top of the
ribbon and facing up. I suspect it had much the same
problems. Brush used a rather complicated network to match
the two sections. I don't think they made these for long.

Actually, the WE 639 (later the Altec 639) used the same arrangement.
It could be a figure-8, an omni, or a cardioid, but it only sounded
even remotely decent as a figure-8 because the dynamic was just so awful.

I thought all the Living Presence recordings were done with Telefunken
condenser mikes?
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."