#86 Condenser Cavalcade - AKG Perception 150 / P170 / P17, Behringer BA-19A

You know me, i can't pass up a silly-good deal when i see one. That's how i ended up grabbing the other week, two AKG small-diaphragm condensers (the black P170 and P17) and a Behringer BA19A boundary-microphone. Yeah, i know, i know, but an equivalent total retail cost of ~250eu got quickly whittled down to 120eu (shipped!). 

The Perception 150 i've had for a good few years now, and i figured i'd include it here, to see if and how the insides of AKG's lower end of SDC's have evolved over the years.

#16 Cheap chinese BM700 / BM800 microphone modding / upgrade, part 2 (CK12 & K47 capsules)

<Continuation from part 1>

After quite a while, i "finally" got around to modding the other three BM800 mics i had. Just for the hell of it, i decided to make a matched triplet (to use as, say, three overheads on a big drum set).

I went with more of my modded-Schoeps boards, and matched components between them, as closely as i could (within reason, at least). Resistors were no big deal, and neither were the capacitors; one of those cheapo chinese ATMega328-based "component testers" helped with matching the JFETs and PNP transistors. No, i didn't necessarily care about the absolute values, just that they're the same (or as close as reasonably possible).

#11 sE Electronics sE X1 rebuild

It's been a good few years since this mic (sE Electronics X1) came into my possession. As many others i have, i bought this one as faulty. The main problem was, it was noisy as hell (think wind-noise, or the sound of blowing straight into a microphone).

Once i had another capsule to test this with (a temporarily removed capsule from a Shure KSM27), i figured i'd hook it up to the X1 to see whether the capsule was the source of the noise. Nope, the noise was still there. After i ruled out the (stock) capsule, i replaced it with a 100pF styroflex capacitor, for minimal hassle (and risk of damaging a capsule) during subsequent testing of the electronics.