Gefell finally makes a 221 capsule omni for music recording. Whose only competition right now is the Josephson C617. I would love to hear how this one stacks up.

Comes with APE's

Microtech Gefell M221

Looks nice! I'd like to test it out, see what can be arranged when it arrives in Sweden...

They have had omnis for a while(m210, mk221, mk202
).. the c617 is a mic body that used the gefell cap


so the only thing here is that gefell supplies the amp too, right?

I have always preferred the gefell mk221 to any other omni. it is ideal, i think.

They had a few amps too for their measurement line, but never made one for the purpose of recording music. They probably realized how revered the Josephson body and mk221 combo had become and wanted to "get in on that action."

Ivo already has them, hope he's gonna report about them soon!

Seems like a super mic!
It draws 6mA current which is a lot. The only other mic around that does that is the TLM170.

I can tell you for sure that my old Neve console won't power this mic.

I look forward to the reports on its sound and usage.

Any idea what these are going to list for?

One source on the new product section mentions 1650 EUR that he heard from Musikmesse. With my calculations that would put is somewhere close to $1700 USD street if you go by some of their other new products.

I have a pair of these microphones on the shopping list!

Gefell M221 and my DPA 4003 will do the trick on my organ recordings. There are no excuses if the recordings are not good enough then. The only thing that can go wrong, is the organist playing!

Cool that it comes with 2 APE's!

50 mV/Pa, a very hot mic.

Well the capsule needs 200 volts, which would explain the current draw and the hot output.`

Well, yes, or the stand collapsing...
It's sad that I'm no longer close to your cathedral in Luleå - it's a nice space. I haven't heard back from the agent regarding these, maybe I should push some buttons...

I talked to him (Mikrofonen.se) yesterday, and he said he did not have them at home, but when I made ​​up my mind, the factory then send them directly to me from Germany.

So I buy them directly, without examining them before, but I've had Gefell in the past and I was not disappointed one seconds.

Post a sample!
Best if you can do an A-B with your DPA!

Is the Microtech Gefell AP 1 preamp a good match for the M221 mic?
"It is ideally suited for the use with condenser microphones in large diaphragm transistor construction which have an extreme low noise level and a very high headroom".

Next weekend I'll try a pair of Gefell M221 and the DPA 4003 on an organ concert. Let's see if I buy the pair, after the concert. It might be an expensive concert for me

Should be interesting to hear how it sounds, as usual, I upload a sample, so you can hear how it sounds when I'm recording pipe organ.

Please share the results! That would be a nice comparison.

That's a great price if true ($1700 US). Beats the C617 by a few hundred bucks...

That's great news! I've been using the MK221 capsules for quite a while with some awesome results. I think they'd mostly determine the final sound.

Here is the recording of classical piano done with those. Although I was using custom head amps, it still would give a good impression as for the ambience, tonal balance, etc.

Tchaikowski, Meditation:

http://www.samaraudiodesign.com/Meditation.wav

Best, M

Proposed currently for 1900 € in Europe (~20% VAT included), more expensive than the C617. Did anyone found a better offer ?


TLM 170 R consumption is 3 mA according to Neumann.

M 221 consumption is specified 5,5 mA in M 221 data sheet, about the same like the Josephson C617 (< 5 mA).

Very nice recording! I recall from an past thread that you sometimes removed
the mic grids. I'm interested to know if you did that for this recording and any other details.

On this one I left the grids on. The piano (Steinway D in Bard College upstate NY) had new hammers and was not completely broken in, so needed some additional brilliance.

The microphone heads (of my own design) are transformer coupled--I needed that because in that particular hall I had to use 150' cables and also I ran into some noise issues there before. Also I used my own custom pres and AD converter going SPDIF into Masterlink and Tascam DR680 as a back up.

I used the mics with Jecklin disk. About 6 feet out the piano and 7 feet high. That hall has beautiful acoustics. To compensate for the new hammers and some too much of the mid-forward qualities of that particular instrument I used EQ--an octave wide bell down a few dBs on 400Hz.

Best, M

Thank you for this discussion. On the subject of TLM 170, what Neumann does not mention (because it is scary) is that 170 requires very high phantom current to start up. Then it settles down to around the mentioned figures. Indeed 170 requires greater than 5.5 mA to start up. This figure was never published but was told to me several times by
Jerry Graham from Gotham Audio (former USA importer for Neumann)

What an interesting point you raise, Plush. Of course we all appreciate the concept of inrush current in power supplies, so why not the startup (compared to steady-state/equilibrium) characteristics for phantom power.

The standard for phantom power (not all mixers comply) requires the ability to deliver 10mA per channel so that should cope with the TLM "in-rush". Possibly a whole board full of TLM170s (there's an idea to conjure with!) could feel a bit stressed if they all started at once, but once "steady-state" is reached (maybe 10 - 15 secs), all should be fine. If it doesn't, what are the consequences - does power regulation in the mic fail and it doesn't start?

And what are the results of "slow ramp-up" phantom as implemented by RME.

Maybe this is worthy of a dedicated phantom power thread. And now back to our scheduled program ...

This start-up thing is interesting. My pair of Gefell M950s take a while to turn on (other mics are almost instant-on), but they do after a few seconds. But yesterday I had considerable trouble to have one of them turn on. I kept flicking the switches on SD722 and went even through the menu if there was some wrong settings somewhere. Finally it caught but I still did not know what happened. NOW, after reading the previous posts I have an idea: we had been running the SD722 for the whole day on the same battery, voltage was down to 6.7V or something. Before this I had run M950s either from a fresh battery or from mains. Maybe a low-battery SD722 can not deliver enough power for startup with a power-hungry mic?

I dont know what it is, but there is something about the sound of this recording (hall) or the instrument that is a bit mushy to my ears.

My 221-s are due to arrive next week!
But in a Josephson/Gefell combo!

Looking forward to setting them up first thing next week!

Yees! On friday I'll have a pair Gefell M221, on sunday they will be a live pipe organ recording in Lulea cathedral. heh

......on Monday we will have samples?

Agreed.