What's your history?
I started recording professionally when I was 18, while I was in college. My job was to record recitals. We had a couple of Neumann M 269 [mics], Neumann SM 2 [stereo mic], and an Ampex 440 [tape deck] and a mixer — seat-of-the-pants recording. If you don't do a good job, you don't get paid. It was great. I went for music study and eventually ended up in recording in San Francisco at Hyde Street Studios in the mid 80s. I was doing tech work and engineering.
Did the tech work come along naturally?
I've been soldering since I was seven, fixing things that had bad soldered joints and whatnot. I don't know if that's legal anymore to let a seven-year-old touch a soldering iron!
Or to inhale those fumes!
I was into ham radio in high school and I was in bands. I came from the musical side, but always had that technical bent. I built a synthesizer when I was in high school. I couldn't have afforded it otherwise! It was the same with microphones. Back in the '90s I couldn't afford then what was a horrifically expensive $5,000 [Neumann] U 47. So the idea of the new company was, "There's got to be a way to duplicate this."
Is that what set you on the path?
When I was at Hyde Street a guy who was working for Dan Alexander — Garry Creiman — showed me the ins and outs of basic microphone repair. Because of that I didn't have the same fear of microphone repair that the other techs seemed to have, and there's always a demand for that job. They had a good collection of vintage mics. I did more of that at Ocean Way [Recording] some 20 years ago. I was the day tech at Ocean Way for four years. After that I started working for a post company. I met up with one of the owners of Soundelux and we started Soundelux Microphones. I'm not going to go into that long history, but we started a microphone company in 1995. It used everybody's favorite term — "imported parts." In the years from '95 to '98 I perceived an explosion of Chinese re-branded microphones that were potentially the same thing. I didn't want to be caught up in that, and it really wasn't what I wanted to build in the first place anyway. So I started moving the company towards recreating the vintage mics that I used as an engineer.
Because you knew there was a scarcity.
I had a studio in Hollywood and it was an obvious need. In 1995 there were maybe five models of tube microphones that you could buy new. Now there are hundreds. I started on the engineering side behind the console. To me, it didn't matter what material we were working on. It was an obvious preference for the musician, and for me, to use tube microphones. They just did the job better. You could have a pile of them up, all the faders up and it wouldn't sound bad. The transistor mics I didn't like as much. That's before I'd studied enough design to understand why.
What did you eventually feel was the reason for that?
There are piles of problems. First of all, FET mics should never have never been standardized with phantom power. They should have had their own power supplies like tube mics do. That would have been a huge improvement right there. They're so finicky that they need to be specially treated. There is no simple FET circuit that works perfectly — not like a tube where you can throw a triode on a good capsule and you've got a halfway decent mic.
The inside of a tube mic is actually a airly simple circuit.
Yes. And, in fact, if you look at the latest mic — the 5- ZERO-7 — it's an exercise in incredible simplicity. But it needs to be done perfectly. Sort of like fine dining — it really requires the best ingredients. Tube mics are very simple, often deceptively so, which works for me in this market.
And you make FET mics.
I make one [the 195]. And I'm going to bring back the ifet7. The 195 is the same mic I've been making since '96 at Soundelux.
That's a very popular mic, partly for the price point and partly for the rewards of what it brings.
Yeah, it's got a lot of features and a good price point. I haven't yet seen anyone put a "fat" switch on a mic like that. The 251 we've been making since 2001, and the 151 used to be called the 251C.
Is that a fixed pattern version of the 251?
Yes, its fixed cardioid. It's stripped down. It's not stylized to the level of the 251.
When you say "stylized," what do you mean?
It doesn't have the chrome — [it's a] much simpler body and a much simpler internal assembly. It's still the same capsule. No patterns, so no expensive pattern switch. There's a lot of labor put into a 251.
I've taken mine apart and looked at it! [laughter]
Yeah, it can be done. You just have to pay attention. It's like a puzzle.
Just adding the chrome bands adds a lot to the cost of engineering and assembly?
Oh, yeah. If you want to use American metal versus Chinese metal, the price is going to be far more than double. In addition, the quality of the metal itself is better with all the American metals. We can plate them a lot more easily. With Chinese metal, the purity of the metal is not the same, so it doesn't plate the same.
When you're doing something like the 251, how close do you feel you get to the original Telefunken ELA M 251 microphone?
Our goal with the 251 was always meant to be my enhanced version of a 251. CK12 capsules are a wonderfully unique capsule that almost always have a unique flat mid-range and are capable of a tremendous amount of low end. The original 251 had a lot of devices in the amplifier to take that bass away. I decided I didn't like that. If I want a high pass filter I'll do it at the console. I eliminated those elements and extended the bandwidth down to 5 Hz. So the capsule is a version of the CK12. They have a flatter midrange, from 3 to 5 kHz than most of the AKG capsules. It's a nice, high- frequency peak — it's not over the top.
There does feel to be a lift in the highs.
Oh, there is. It's not overwhelming and it's not unpleasant. That's the whole point of that capsule and that amplifier mating. We basically optimize the amplifier, following the capsule, to allow the 251 to breathe in the low end in a way that it had never done before. We were recording last night with one of mine and an original one as a stereo pair on piano, and it was great.
