Topic: matched set? for AKG 460 and ck61

[markrsmith]

Just got these AKG's, better than i could have hoped.  The mic body serial #'s are 22217 and 22541. The cap serial #'s are 14300 and 14311.  The original freq. response charts came with them. 
My question, looking at the graph, are these considered a matched set, or are they off a'bit?  How far off do "other brand" of mics differ for a matching set? 
Looking at the Date, is that an 87 or B7?

Thanks y'all

[datbrad]

AKG does not sell matched pairs. You can request sequential serial numbers from retailers when buying new 480s and CK6x caps, but that's it. AKG maintains their mfg process ensures no need to match, which may not be entirely true, but I can say the pair of 460s with CK61s and CK63s I bought new from Full Compass in 1994 are a few hundred apart in serial numbers and have shown no signicant difference in sound over all that time in use, so I would not worry about that issue with yours. How well they were kept and what type of application they had in the past is far more important.

[DSatz]

I had posted this whole other, long reply based on generalities. But now, after looking at the graphs, I'm simplifying it drastically: It depends on how you're using the microphones. For a widely-spaced pair or for conventional studio-style close miking they would probably be OK, but I certainly wouldn't use them for coincident or near-coincident two-mike stereo recording. One microphone has a generally downward-sloping response throughout the main part of the audible spectrum, while the other is upward-sloping--and as you can see from the "pot[entiometer] 50 dB" marking, the vertical divisions are 2 dB each.

So there is a really significant divergence between the microphones, particularly in the critical upper midrange. In no way should a reputable company sell this as a matched pair, in my opinion.

I know, you didn't say that they were sold that way, but this goes to show why matched pairs can be valuable for two-mike stereo recording (or for recordings in which the main signals are coming from just two microphones even when other signals are mixed in as well). If you were to make test recordings with these two microphones, swapping the left with the right microphone and recording the same sonic occurrence before as after, you would almost certainly hear real differences between the recordings.

To me, if a microphone pair is well matched, it wouldn't matter very much which one you used as the left and which one you used as the right; the sonic impression would be basically the same either way, give or take some small fraction of a dB in overall left/right balance. And unfortunately I don't think that you could possibly have that here.

--best regards