> AKG Colettes
That doesn't make sense when you know what the name means. "Colette" is what Dr. Schoeps (40 years ago now) chose to call his company's then-new CMC microphone series/system. It comes from the name of an actual, living person--the favorite niece of a retired French colonel whose influence with the French national broadcasting company (then called the "ORTF") was critical in getting them to adopt Schoeps microphones in the 1950s. The ORTF remained Schoeps' biggest single customer during the years in which the company became solidly established.
So the name applies only to products made by Schoeps for that one specific system; it doesn't even apply to the various other types of microphones and accessories that Schoeps makes.
An "active" accessory is an extension device between the capsule and amplifier of a condenser microphone that has active circuitry in it (the FET impedance converter). Schoeps--more precisely Jörg Wuttke, Schoeps' chief engineer at the time--invented this type of arrangement; he and Dr. Schoeps were awarded a patent on it. Other manufacturers found their customers switching to Schoeps and decided that they had to offer functionally similar (or at least similar-looking) arrangements. But because of the patent, their extension accessories were passive, or else they were skating close to the line and daring Schoeps to sue them. Only in more recent years, since the patent expired, have other major manufacturers legally been able to imitate the Schoeps system more closely, introducing extension accessories that are actually active.
--best regards
Topic: Naiant AKG active naming conventions (Read 7352 times)