schoepsnbox asked:
> so what do you get back a bag of parts?
In this case I was spared that. They put the parts back into the capsule housing, closed it up and put a sticker on the top that says "repair impossible". The pattern selector even rotates and clicks as if it were a functioning three-pattern capsule. It's a nice memorial to what might have been.
In a way this is karma for me. (sigh) I've prodded and provoked people at the company for over 40 years about this capsule type, and I haven't always been my best self about it. (There was a crowning incident that I will sit on for a few more years, I think, but the story doesn't reflect very well on me.)
Getting back to the original point of this thread, though: In my current thinking and with my current set of ears, the two current Schoeps capsules that give me the most of what I like about the MK 6 cardioid are the MK 22 and the MK 41 V. Since neither of those is a cardioid, they're not direct substitutes, of course. But they each have a major part of what I like.
To me there's nothing inherently magical or ideal about a cardioid pattern as such. It's one point along the spectrum, and it happens to be halfway mathematically between the two ends of that spectrum--but that isn't "a fact that one can hear". It's far more important, for example, that the on-axis frequency response be flat and smooth, and that the pattern be maintained evenly across the frequency spectrum, so that (conversely) the smooth frequency response of the capsule will apply to all important angles of sound incidence. And the MK 22 and MK 41 V both excel in those respects, as does the MK 6 in its cardioid setting.
--best regards
P.S. added a few weeks later: Evidently they had better luck with the second used MK 6 that I sent them for checkout/repair. It's on its way back now. My expectations had been lowered so far that when I heard the news, I felt as if I'd won some kind of Lottery prize. So now I have a nice "M" capsule to use for M/S recording.
P.P.S. added ~3 months after the first P.S.: Another fairly early (s/n 18xx) Colette MK 6 turned up on eBay; I bought it, but found that it was figure-8 in all three pattern settings. I sent it to Schoeps for a repair attempt, but it was another total loss. So that's two total losses out of three for me in the past year.