I recently acquired a fully restored Nakamichi 550 cassette deck, the same model used by some serious tapers in the '70s, including the legendary Mike Millard, most famous for his Led Zeppelin 1975-77 and Bob Dylan 1978-79 tapes. While I had seen pictures of the deck many times, I had no idea how big and heavy it is. Yes, it is portable in that it can be fully operated on 8 D-cel batteries, but it is as heavy and large as many home tape decks. It easily weighs over 15 pounds, which makes me respect its use in stealth taping all the more.
According to Millard's own handwritten notes, his primary microphone set-up was a pair of AKG 4541E microphones. Until a couple of days ago, I had never researched these mics, but after doing so I began to understand his choice. First, they were/are a very well regarded condenser mic, with interchangeable caps, including the CK-1 cardioid caps, which is what Millard used. Second, you could alter the angle with A51 swivel adapters that allowed the taper to tilt the caps 90 degrees from the bodies, which could be incredibly helpful in a stealth situation. Given that some believe Millard used a wheelchair to record, it makes sense that the mics could be mounted more easily with the swivel caps to aim them forward and maintain a low profile.
But the question I'm looking to answer is what did he use to power the mics? The Nakamichi 550 is designed to be used with Nak's microphone series, CM-50, CM-100, CM-300, CM-700, CM-1000, all of which are battery powered, with a single battery in the body (or in the case of the 1000, in a portable preamp, if memory serves).
Did AKG sell a portable, battery operated pre-amp for the 451 line for use when phantom power wasn't available? If they didn't, what kind of battery phantom power source/pre-amp would have been in common use circa 1975-81?
Would welcome anyone's POV on this, as my goal to mirror his set-up and use it in the wild. There's something about the sound and quality that Millard was able to capture that I want to attempt to recreate.
Thanks,
BK for JEMS