Topic: "Classic" GD taping mics still available?

[heathen]

Leading up to the Dead & Co. shows this summer, I've thought it might be fun to run some mics that used to be popular among Grateful Dead tapers back in the day (70s-80s).  Are any still available and not too expensive?  This would just be something for the hell of it and not something I'd want to drop a lot of money into.  Anyone have ideas/suggestions?

[DavidPuddy]

Nak 300s are pretty classic

https://www.ebay.com/itm/THREE-PACK-Nakamichi-CM-300-Microphones-with-CP-1-Cardiod-Capsules/264078100172?hash=item3d7c4806cc:g:z1AAAOSwaadaqm6d:rk:3:pf:0

[kindms]

Beyer M201s
Sennhieser's

AKG c422
Naks as mentioned
Those Oade boys ran the darkside

[rocksuitcase]

Sennheiser 421's were great FOB GD mics. The 441 also was used but not as many as 421's.

[billydee]

In my not so humble opinion, the Nakamichi CM series (300/100) series mics and their related clones still sound great if you take care of them and of course position them for success. 

I've managed to find inexpensive brand new in the box sets of them on ebay a couple of times in recent years.

[rippleish20]

It depends on when you started taping, but I originally used Nak 300s and later bought shotguns, then I moved to Sennheiser 441's and 421's. Even later Neumann KM140s, You can probably round up any of them but 421s and 441s are still for sale. I love 441s...

[MakersMarc]

[quote
Those Oade boys ran the darkside
[/quote]

👍, now you gotta find a giant pcm deck.😁

[daspyknows]

[quote
Those Oade boys ran the darkside

👍, now you gotta find a giant pcm deck.😁
[/quote]

They helped convince me to the darkside, sold me my PCM F-1/SL2000.  I started with Sennheiser 421, Used Nak 300 shot guns, Sennheiser shotguns and Beyer M-88's until I moved west then Neumans and Schoeps.  The 421s were greater mics for FOB taping in the early days of semi open taping.

[JohnnyAcey]

I still love listening to my recordings from the 70's made with two Sennheiser 421's into the L/R inputs and one 441 into the 3rd "Blend" input on my Nakamichi 550.  Love that sound.   

[mountaintaper]

I still have Sennheiser ME80's and ME-40's

[twatts (pants are so over-rated...)]

What were the Audio Technica shotguns used in the 80s???  The AT835's??? 

I have a PH tape labeled "AT guns" from a 80s GD taper... 

Terry

[jefflester]

What were the Audio Technica shotguns used in the 80s???  The AT835's??? 

I have a PH tape labeled "AT guns" from a 80s GD taper... 

Terry

815s were the longer ones and 835 the shorter.

https://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/b45046ae1e717f6b/index.html
https://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/5820fd64ff477519/index.html

[skaggs]

In my not so humble opinion, the Nakamichi CM series (300/100) series mics and their related clones still sound great if you take care of them and of course position them for success. 

I've managed to find inexpensive brand new in the box sets of them on ebay a couple of times in recent years.

Nakamichi Billy! 

[billydee]

In my not so humble opinion, the Nakamichi CM series (300/100) series mics and their related clones still sound great if you take care of them and of course position them for success. 

I've managed to find inexpensive brand new in the box sets of them on ebay a couple of times in recent years.

Nakamichi Billy!

Ya know...I started with Naks way back in the day. Followed Doug Oade's always good advice back in 1985 and went over to the dark side for about 20 years, and then ended up back in Nak and Nak clone land!
And I couldn't be happier.

[Chuck]

I always assumed it was the Oades and Mike Grace who brought Schoeps to prominence in tapers circles. I know Doug liked Microtech Gefell's for a while too.

[goodcooker]

I'm spinning some DATs I received from a mutual friend of a GD patcher friend of ours who noted some of the mics he patched out of back then and I'm very impressed with the pulls from the Sennheiser 441 rigs. Great sound for a dynamic mic at a distance.

[intpseeker]

Listening to Mr. Darby's AKG451's had me put together a set. Still run them.

https://archive.org/details/gd1991-11-03.AKG451.Darby.117753.Flac1644/gd1991-11-03.AKG451.t15.flac

[DSatz]

Here are some 45-year-old Sennheiser data sheets on the original MD 421 in case anyone's interested.

The MD 421 was widely used as a handheld "on-the-scene" mike by TV news reporters, and was very often seen on camera in Germany back in the day. It was used as a public address and press conference mike as well. It had a heavy construction--at 14 oz., about five times the weight of a typical small condenser microphone. Back when it was introduced, only the most expensive portable recorders had built-in powering for condenser microphones, so a dynamic microphone meant quicker setup and connection, plus operational reliability along with the above-mentioned physical toughness.

The spec sheet reveals something of a marketing shell game in which the microphone is supposedly flat and transparent for full-range music applications but at the same time, has profiled response specifically for speech intelligibility. In truth it is an in-between creature. Its response graph shows a rolloff of 9 dB at 50 Hz and a very broad treble boost of about 5 dB, typical of microphones designed primarily for speech applications and spot miking. An alternate version had a further, variable low-frequency rolloff (not shown on the graph) useful for speech pickup in reverberant environments and/or for very close pickup generally.

There is a modern replacement for the MD 421, but it isn't the same. Because of EU "RoHS" restrictions on the use of materials that are now considered hazardous and/or that pose a problem for eventual disposal, European manufacturers nowadays can't simply replicate their own past products even when they want to. In addition, for decades Sennheiser has been the most high-volume-production-oriented of the European professional microphone manufacturers--the scale of their operations is very large--and the production methods and machines from decades ago have no doubt been superseded several times over by now.

--best regards

Edited later to add Beatles screen capture (I think this was their arrival for their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show; to me that looks like a Tuchel connector, so it may have been put there by a German TV reporter).

[ThePiedPiper]

Leading up to the Dead & Co. shows this summer, I've thought it might be fun to run some mics that used to be popular among Grateful Dead tapers back in the day (70s-80s).  Are any still available and not too expensive?  This would just be something for the hell of it and not something I'd want to drop a lot of money into.  Anyone have ideas/suggestions?

Awesome idea!!!!!  I would love to hear the end result.  Keep us updated as to what you use and the results. GOO LUCK!
 

[goodcooker]

I just picked up a pair of Sennheiser K2U/ME40 mics on Reverb really cheap when the seller accepted my offer of 30% lower than the asking price. Looking forward to using them this summer and getting that vintage vibe. They are the early versions from the 70s and seem to be working just fine.

[HealthCov Chris]

grab some Nak 300's with cp-4 gun!  They will sound great mixed with your current set, work well in places like The Granada, and of course at festivals.  And...I want to here them.   

[tivva]

Leading up to the Dead & Co. shows this summer, I've thought it might be fun to run some mics that used to be popular among Grateful Dead tapers back in the day (70s-80s).  Are any still available and not too expensive?  This would just be something for the hell of it and not something I'd want to drop a lot of money into.  Anyone have ideas/suggestions?

here's one for ya!

have a complete Nakamichi CM300 setup for ya...2 or 3 mic setups
Cm300's (3) full bodies with attenuator,
(3)CP 1's, cardiods, (3) CP 2's Omni's, & (2) CP 4's Shotgunz capsules. & most in original boxes,
MX 100 Mixer, & a PS 100 power supply & all cables, windscreens, mic clips, Tbars & everything ya need except for your recording unit...
might even have something there too...

so if your interested...all my gear is in excellent shape & am known in our lilcircle of us ole new england tapers...no junk here!

let me know...will make ya a great deal...& ample instruction to make killer 3/mic mixes...amazing sound

ask if ya need anything else? Ask for it, might have it...have a pretty full closet!

pax...
tiv

[Gutbucket]

^ With that MX100 mixer you can have fun running 3 mic mixes into a stereo cassette recorder.  Dust of the Sony TC-D5 and break the shrink wrap on that moldering brick of Maxcells.

Go old-school mic-technique with two guns PAS + omni for one show.  Then using the same gear, try a modern 3-mic technique which is basically an inversion of that: two wide omnis + a single gun in the middle.  Compare and contrast.  Then post flowerful descriptions of the lot scene on the electronic bulletin boards!

[heathen]

Anyone know what the vertically-oriented mic is in the top photo on page 57 here? https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Audio/80s/Audio-1988-01.pdf

[billydee]

Anyone know what the vertically-oriented mic is in the top photo on page 57 here? https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Audio/80s/Audio-1988-01.pdf

If you're referring to the mic in the pic with Jim Oade, it kinda looks like a stereo ribbon mic I used to own, a Speiden SF-12 model. But I can't be sure.
https://reverb.com/item/5859094-speiden-sf-12-stereo-ribbon-microphone-kit-no-145-with-box-cables-and-royer-shock-mount

[Chuck]

Anyone know what the vertically-oriented mic is in the top photo on page 57 here? https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Audio/80s/Audio-1988-01.pdf

There's an advertisement in there, p.37 for Rowland Research amplifiers. Mike Grace worked for them in Colorado Springs before moving to Boulder to start his own company. I would go to Rowland to listen to his and Oade's latest Grateful Dead recordings on the state of the art amps and speakers at the time ~ late 1980's.

[Gutbucket]

Anyone know what the vertically-oriented mic is in the top photo on page 57 here? https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Audio/80s/Audio-1988-01.pdf

There's an advertisement in there, p.37 for Rowland Research amplifiers. Mike Grace worked for them in Colorado Springs before moving to Boulder to start his own company. I would go to Rowland to listen to his and Oade's latest Grateful Dead recordings on the state of the art amps and speakers at the time ~ late 1980's.

Great taper article I'd not seen before, especially as it's more gear-centric than most.  Thanks for posting the link.

I recall audio gear of that era well as it was a formative time for me working for a then regional hifi outfit, wiring up audio and video distribution and signal switchers for selecting various speaker/amp combinations in their stores.  Fun seeing adds for what was hip at the time.

There's an advert on p.35 for the Yamaha DSP-1 which I remember rather fondly, which claims it to be "The most significant advance in the control of auditory space since stereo."  I had one in the later 80's along with the 4-channel amp which went along with it, used to drive 4 dedicated speakers separate from the main pair, positioned in the upper room corners.  The processor was marketed oddly and featured both studio effects and digital ambience recreation programs.  It was a lot of fun at parties for making the music spin around the room or whatever, but was really good for essentially "spatializing" dry board tapes and studio-recorded CDs via six Infinity speakers.  The thing was heady.  Outside of actual concert experiences, most folks who dropped by one of our parties to listen had never heard anything like how the sound "embraced them" filling the room 3-dimensionally with sound.  One time the group headed out elsewhere while one head remained behind and begged me to leave the system on for him, looping a single track from Brothers In Arms for about 5 hours straight until we all returned and urged him out of the vortex.

As fun as that thing was it suffered from the digital tech of the day: 16-bit and quite noisy, but was far superior to the crappy "fake surround" settings which became standard fare on home theater receivers a decade later and gave ambience recreation a bad name.  It's perhaps not surprising that it instilled a certain spatial-realism bug in my ear which went on to drive experimentation which eventually lead to the multichannel OMT recording and playback setups I blather about too much here at TS.  Roots.

[ero3030]

I'm spinning some DATs I received from a mutual friend of a GD patcher friend of ours who noted some of the mics he patched out of back then and I'm very impressed with the pulls from the Sennheiser 441 rigs. Great sound for a dynamic mic at a distance.

my taping mentor ran EV's hard wired into a d6 in the early to mid 80's and his taping buddy ran 441's into a d5.  those tapes were the reason we met.  15 rows back, 441's were killer!  ed

[heathen]

I was hoping there might be some classics that can be picked up for a song on today's market, but it seems like most of the mics mentioned in this thread would still be at least in the $300 range for a pair (if not considerably more).  If I were going to buy these to use consistently, no big deal.  But for what would essentially be a couple nights just for the hell of it, I wouldn't want to pay in the hundreds of dollars.

That said, this is an informative and entertaining thread, and I love hearing about the old days, so keep it going.   

[daspyknows]

Anyone know what the vertically-oriented mic is in the top photo on page 57 here? https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Audio/80s/Audio-1988-01.pdf

There's an advertisement in there, p.37 for Rowland Research amplifiers. Mike Grace worked for them in Colorado Springs before moving to Boulder to start his own company. I would go to Rowland to listen to his and Oade's latest Grateful Dead recordings on the state of the art amps and speakers at the time ~ late 1980's.

That brings back memories.  I first met Mike when he was looking for a patch and I had just gotten my first pair of 421's.  I also remember that article.  Where have the years gone?

[Limit35]

I was hoping there might be some classics that can be picked up for a song on today's market, but it seems like most of the mics mentioned in this thread would still be at least in the $300 range for a pair (if not considerably more).  If I were going to buy these to use consistently, no big deal.  But for what would essentially be a couple nights just for the hell of it, I wouldn't want to pay in the hundreds of dollars.

That said, this is an informative and entertaining thread, and I love hearing about the old days, so keep it going.   

What shows are you going to this summer? I was going to run P48 CP4s with probably a center ME80 (Nak 300) omni, as well as other rigs depending on the venue. I would have two ME80 cards and a MX100 available.

[heathen]

What shows are you going to this summer? I was going to run P48 CP4s with probably a center ME80 (Nak 300) omni, as well as other rigs depending on the venue. I would have two ME80 cards and a MX100 available.

Just the two nights in Boulder.

[ycoop]

Anyone know what the vertically-oriented mic is in the top photo on page 57 here? https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Audio/80s/Audio-1988-01.pdf

This article was a particularly interesting read for a new taper such as myself.

[Limit35]

What shows are you going to this summer? I was going to run P48 CP4s with probably a center ME80 (Nak 300) omni, as well as other rigs depending on the venue. I would have two ME80 cards and a MX100 available.

Just the two nights in Boulder.

I was planning on hitting those shows also but not taping, I figured I would have fun and roam around at that one. If you're interested in borrowing some mics for fun let me know.

[checht]

Just found this article again, because of this thread. Forgot I ran that Fostex mixer pictured on p60. Hid it in a box of granola to get it into Greeks  Flexible and great attitude gf got used to strapping the F1 to her thigh and her friend did the same with a beta.

The reporter mistakenly wrote that I ran Neumann TLM170s rather than KM84i, but accurate for the rest. Fun to be able to run comps in a venue with great sound.

Ended up building the black box preamps, first for the 84's, then other similar mics, and a lot of friends ran them. Covered my gear jones pretty much.

[EmRR]

Anyone know what the vertically-oriented mic is in the top photo on page 57 here? https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Audio/80s/Audio-1988-01.pdf

This article was a particularly interesting read for a new taper such as myself.

Hadn't seen that, thanks!