MXL 960, now with Peluso capsule

P

pylet2000

New member
So I broke down and finally did it, I got the Peluso CEK-89 capsule and put it into my MXL 960. I figured I'd share my findings with you folks, in case any of you are thinking of doing the same.

Upon receiving the capsule and comparing it with the original MXL capsule, I quickly realized they are made of the exact same housing. I literally was able to take the original capsule off and mount the new one on the same stand, using the original screws. Talk about easy.

The difference is in the sputtering. The original MXL capsule had a gold film so thin, it was translucent. You could see straight through it! The Peluso had nicer looking solid sputtering, and appeared to have better attention to detail. I wasn't sure I'd hear a huge difference, but I did expect an improvement.

The proof is in the pudding so they say. I simply recorded a sample acoustic guitar against a take I did with the old capsule, so I could A/B them. In short, the Peluso spanked the original take in the terms of body, clarity, and definition in the mix. The original had an artificially hyped treble sound that didn't help it stand out in the mix, but did make it harsh/tinny. The body was much blurrier in the mix with the original. The original had "bigger" lows, but the Peluso seemed rounder and more natural. I found that the Peluso capsule actually allowed me to have the signal lower in the mix while still hearing it more clearly.

I think I've heard it said before that the main difference between good and great mics is discovered when trying to track an entire song, was that Harvey? I read it from one of the wise folks here I'm sure. I feel my capsule experiment is proof of the concept.

And I'll go ahead and say that it was worth the $120 bucks and 30 minutes of my time. I can't remember what I originally paid for that mic over a year ago, but I can hear some of the dissenters saying "for the price of the capsule and the mic, you could have gotten a nice AT and been done with it." That's probably true, but I'll contend that this is just a different path to the same end, a good mic that will track very nicely in a full song.

If I get a little more adventurous, I might look into building a transformer circuit where the PCB is now. Although, the PCB/transistor/transformerless thing doesn't seem to be killing the deal all that much, just seems like another method of buffering the impedances. I may not gain that much going old-school with the circuit...

You folks will probably want some sound clips. If I think about it tonight I'll take a snippet of each take and toss them up on my website.
 
It isn't just in the sputtering!

It is also even and correct frequency tensioning of the diaphragms! The Chinese are a bit unskilled or careless and using incorrect tensioning.

You'll also find a big difference between transformerless and a good transformer. The sound really is in the metal of the core.

Transformerless are uncolored to a certain extent. Transformers have a color, but man, what beautiful color! I have recently been installing some AMI transformers in some of mine.

Mmmmmmmmmm.
 
Pylet,

Hey, thanks for the info! That is much appreciated.

$120, eh? For an almost drop-in upgrade... that's mighty tempting.
:)
 
BTW, the thickness of the gold isn't that big an issue. You have to understand that so long as it conducts and the capacitance is where it should be, its fine.

Sputtering is a means of depositing gold on the mylar or PVC in a method similar to spray painting. It means the gold is put on in a kind of lumpy manner. This can effect transients.

If the diaphragm's gold is vapor deposited (by evaporating the gold in a vacuum chamber) the gold layer is smoother and the result is better sound. Almost always with vapor deposited diaphragms the gold looks translucent or even green.
 
Yeah, I used the single sided CEK-89. 100% drop in replacement, as long as you can solder some very thin wires (about 28 gauge).

Definately the best $120 'addition' to my limited mic collection, I don't think $120 (above the sunk cost of the 960 itself) would have given me anything near as cool.

If your opening the mic to do this, look around for some old 12AY7's or 12AT7's. I know for sure you can find a Mullard 12AT7 for $30, great sounding tube that makes a very noticable difference as well on the 960. The stock tube is pretty well rubbish.
 
Pylet,

Thanks for the info! I've already done the tube swap (though I've got a '59 Mullard I may well swap in for the 4024 soon). Got the CEK-89s on the way, and it should show up any day now. Can't wait to swap it in!:D
 
Excellent! Can't wait to hear what you think of the mod. I think for the costs, this is a fun DIY path to a beautiful mic. Especially if you bought a used 960, you could really put something together fairly cheap.

Phil, if I wanted to go with a simple single pattern transformer circuit, what all is involved with that? I think the mic could probably be taken to yet another level with an extremely simple circuit, a top notch transformer, and very high quality film (or maybe even oil) decoupling capacitors.

I haven't found a schematic that really deals with a simple single pattern mic, but the basics are fairly easy, right? Supply about 50 volts DC to the back plate, amp the front plate signal with a medium mu triode (12AT7 or AY7 ideally) in a very clean manner, decouple the signal from the plate DC via caps, and send that AC signal to an appropriate ratio transformer?
 
pylet2000 said:
Excellent! Can't wait to hear what you think of the mod. I think for the costs, this is a fun DIY path to a beautiful mic. Especially if you bought a used 960, you could really put something together fairly cheap.

Phil, if I wanted to go with a simple single pattern transformer circuit, what all is involved with that? I think the mic could probably be taken to yet another level with an extremely simple circuit, a top notch transformer, and very high quality film (or maybe even oil) decoupling capacitors.

I haven't found a schematic that really deals with a simple single pattern mic, but the basics are fairly easy, right? Supply about 50 volts DC to the back plate, amp the front plate signal with a medium mu triode (12AT7 or AY7 ideally) in a very clean manner, decouple the signal from the plate DC via caps, and send that AC signal to an appropriate ratio transformer?
Click to expand...

I built a circuit based on the U47, but uses a 6205 sub-mini pentode tube wired like the VF14 and slightly under-heated. I tried with a Lundahl transformer originally, but wanted a bit more color and slightly bigger sound so I opted for an AMI BV8 transformer. Same as the U47. Paper in Oil and Audiophile film caps. Easy to do, and sounds bitchin! Supplied the plate with 125 and 5 for the filament. I'm still fine tuning the right resistor combination, but it sounds good!
 
Yeah, you talked me into it. I'm just far too curious now.

What kind of voltage did you charge the back plate with? I see the U47 has about 53VDC, did you go with something similar? I take it the 6205 (5840) has a pretty similar effective plate resistance to the VF14, they seem like pretty similar tubes.

I pretty well have to do this now, I'm all giddy about designing a single pattern circuit around the U47 concept.
 
Swapped my Capsule!

Big Thumbs up the Pylet! :D

I swapped out the capsule in my 960 tonight for the Peluso. Warmed it up for about a half hour and then did a vocal test track through it, running alongside a track I did with the unmodded mic.

To paraphrase Pylet, it spanked the stock capsule. Way way way clearer! My stock capule had a pretty nice high end, but this is even better. You can almost see the edges around worlds/sounds/tone.

I also pulled the inner screen out of the headbasket while I had everything apart. It was very easy to do, and looks mega cool to boot.

Again, it was an easy mod. I had a couple of screws that didn't want to come out and threatened to strip the heads off... but they moved easily when I put a decent pair of needlenose pliers on them. I'm very happy.
 
Excellent! I was hoping that would work out as well for you as it did for me. Helps to validate that I'm not just sniffing glue, and there was a large difference between the two.

I'm now in the process of putting together a transformer based circuit a la Phil style. Cinemag transformer, 1/2 of a 12AT7, and a Jensen paper in oil cap, plus whatever resistors are required to get it all working. This should be a beautiful mic when finished. The power supply puts out 205VDC for the plate, and strangely 9VDC for the heater. They did a little work on the mic's PCB to drop it down (too low) to 5.75VDC, so I'll have to do something similar to drop/filter the heater supply.

I'm pretty excited to hear what this mic can do after this much overhauling.
 
I just did the same thing, except I replaced the stock caspsule in my MXL V6 with a cek-89s. The diff was noticable. Smoother highs and a more focused midrange. Kinda Neumann like. Proximity kinda went down a bit with the Peluso, but that is probably for the better.
 
Pylet,

Well, thanks again for blazing the trail on this mod. This was my first foray into capsule swapping and the like. I wrenched cars a lot in my younger days... but the parts were WAY bigger and generally far less delicate! Anyway, I'm really looking forward to putting this mic through its paces on some tracks in the next week or so.:)

Can't wait to hear what comes of your transformer mod. That's WAY over my head!!
 
Sonicsynth,

Yeah... that's a good way to describe it: "A more focused midrange." That sums up what I was hearing very well.


sonicsynth said:
I just did the same thing, except I replaced the stock caspsule in my MXL V6 with a cek-89s. The diff was noticable. Smoother highs and a more focused midrange. Kinda Neumann like. Proximity kinda went down a bit with the Peluso, but that is probably for the better.
Click to expand...
 
pylet2000 said:
So I broke down and finally did it, I got the Peluso CEK-89 capsule and put it into my MXL 960. I figured I'd share my findings with you folks, in case any of you are thinking of doing the same.

Upon receiving the capsule and comparing it with the original MXL capsule, I quickly realized they are made of the exact same housing. I literally was able to take the original capsule off and mount the new one on the same stand, using the original screws. Talk about easy.

The difference is in the sputtering. The original MXL capsule had a gold film so thin, it was translucent. You could see straight through it! The Peluso had nicer looking solid sputtering, and appeared to have better attention to detail. I wasn't sure I'd hear a huge difference, but I did expect an improvement.

The proof is in the pudding so they say. I simply recorded a sample acoustic guitar against a take I did with the old capsule, so I could A/B them. In short, the Peluso spanked the original take in the terms of body, clarity, and definition in the mix. The original had an artificially hyped treble sound that didn't help it stand out in the mix, but did make it harsh/tinny. The body was much blurrier in the mix with the original. The original had "bigger" lows, but the Peluso seemed rounder and more natural. I found that the Peluso capsule actually allowed me to have the signal lower in the mix while still hearing it more clearly.

I think I've heard it said before that the main difference between good and great mics is discovered when trying to track an entire song, was that Harvey? I read it from one of the wise folks here I'm sure. I feel my capsule experiment is proof of the concept.

And I'll go ahead and say that it was worth the $120 bucks and 30 minutes of my time. I can't remember what I originally paid for that mic over a year ago, but I can hear some of the dissenters saying "for the price of the capsule and the mic, you could have gotten a nice AT and been done with it." That's probably true, but I'll contend that this is just a different path to the same end, a good mic that will track very nicely in a full song.

If I get a little more adventurous, I might look into building a transformer circuit where the PCB is now. Although, the PCB/transistor/transformerless thing doesn't seem to be killing the deal all that much, just seems like another method of buffering the impedances. I may not gain that much going old-school with the circuit...

You folks will probably want some sound clips. If I think about it tonight I'll take a snippet of each take and toss them up on my website.
Click to expand...

Probably a dumb question, but why the single sided capsule. I plan to do this to my MXL 960, and am new to tweaking a mic.

Thanks,

Tom
 
The mic's current circuit board is only geared up to handle a single sided (thus cardiod pattern) capsule. There's two wires from the capsule(one from the backplate, one from the gold diaphragm), and only a place for two wires on the circuit board. With the stock transformerless design, you're limited to just this single pattern. Sounds great though, really spruces this mic up into something excellent.

If you're going to do this, be forewarned that the leads coming off the capsule are tiny, around 28 gauge wire. Makes it difficult to strip the insulation off if you don't have strippers that can handle wire that small. Where the wires connect to the circuit board is fairly tight, so you'll need a decent (or at least reasonable sized) soldering iron. And the capsule is extremely delicate, it has to be handled with complete caution to avoid touching the diaphragm with your fingers/tools/etc...

Other than those little details, it's straightforward, easy, and sounds really nice.
 
pylet2000 said:
The mic's current circuit board is only geared up to handle a single sided (thus cardiod pattern) capsule. . . .
Click to expand...

Thanks pylet2000. I am excited about this. I am going to find someone to do the wiring for me.

One more question, is this a large diaphragm capsule?

thanks

tom
 
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