Just as an aside, the Sonosax SX-M2/LS is said to power these caps as well, at least in the French version of the owners manual. Makes me wonder how hard it would be to setup something similar to what you've done for the Schoeps or Neumann 100 series caps.
- Jason
I'm pretty sure the Schoeps and Neumann are externally polarized. Like the AKG CK6x series, these need 62V to the capsule. From the Scheops documentation it looks like the active heads actually have four wires going to them: ground, +62V (polarize the cap), +9V or so (for the FET), and audio return. All are inside that active cable!
To drive these the system would need a 62V generator in the box, and an additional FET, *right at the capsule* (built into the connector). As far as I know, this is what the "Nbox", "Rbox", "jk_labs", etc all do. But I'm happy to see pictures of the guts if anyone has them!
I'm thinking about building a set of actives, but not right away. I hope someone will get to it before me. My next project is to build some more preamps. Oh yeah, I'm going to go to some more shows and drink some beer too
Hey, while we all ponder this, does anyone out there have any mechanical expertise? In particular, could you tell me what thread is on the AKG CK6x caps? Half of the battle is getting a good connection to the capsule, just an inch or so of aluminum or copper pipe with the exact thread on it to mate with the AKG caps. Then figure out some spring-type mechanism to reliably contact with the center pin. Perhaps mimic what is in the 460/480 body. The second half of the battle is to get a reliable battery operated 62V power source (oscillator/voltage multiplier/charge pump). After this is very easy to build the appropriate circuit.
Richard