Well, just looked at the OP, and darn if I noticed that I TOTALLY MISSED the inclusion of "Sennheiser!" Yeah, my powers of observation are at a fever pitch these days...
I don't doubt that mic is a good'un- many of what we now consider excellent blues harp mics now were originally spoken-voice mics.
It is probably true that the build quality of items from decades ago is better than today, at perhaps every level- i.e. perhaps even the thin-gauge
wire that was used to wind coils back then was "better" than what is used today, even if it was not as precise and consistant. Cost cutting goes deep, and today we have the ability to suss out exactly what produces the intended results, and thus eliminate everything that is not "essential." The obvious advantage of that is one can produce, say, a microphone that very closely reproduces the published spec's of one from "back in the day," with
exactly the "correct" wire gauge, [/I]exactly[/I] the "correct" number of windings, and the
exact winding pattern as the original. The reproduction is then assembled with a high level of machine work, introducing even
more exactitude. But, the side-effects is often that accidental effects that crept in because of the very
inexactitude in materials and assembly of the original are lost.
Craftsmanship is something of a lost art, these days. Once, it was found in almost everything that was made- not because the workers of old were inherently "better" than those of today, but because external factors were forcing them to be- it was easier to get canned if you didn't measure up. The man who turned a bobbin by hand in Germany, a half-century ago, has been replaced by a woman who only puts the empty coils in, and takes them out, and makes sure that a machine in China does not run out of wire- the machine does everything else. Today, if the coils are not up to spec, a technician comes in and adjust the machine. No one who touches the assembly (we don't even call it the same thing, anymore) could be considered a "craftsman." When there is no "craft," there is no motivation to
be a "craftsman."
But, it's not just assembly. Materials have changed, too. Material quality that was literally taken for granted a century ago, is just no longer available. Most of the old-growth forest have been largely clear-cut, the land that had a unique combination of climate, altitude, ecosystems, etc., that accidently produced several species of trees- spruce included- that happened to be near-perfect
acoustic guitar tone wood, are now cleared of spruce trees, and are (at best) now planted with nothing but pine- any other tree or plant is considered a weed and yanked out. One of the reasons LaSiDo instruments are as good as they are is because the company has it's own, private stand of forest, to use for it's guitars. Those instruments are largely machine-built- what sets LaSiDo's apart from much of their competition is the quality of materials. Unfortunately, those materials are much harder to come by, these days.
It is easy to mourn the loss of craftsmanship and high-grade materials, and probably appropriate. But one can not bring back the dead, no matter how many people "sit shiva." Yes, there are craftsmen still in the world, and there are still
some sources of old-world quality raw materials- but those things cost- BIG. The temptation to buy cheap and damn the circumstances is just too strong for most of us. "Good enough" has become our motto- we don't realize that the difference between "good enough" materials and workmanship and "old world" materials and
craftsmanship degrades our work as well. Our results are consistent, but the high mark is
lowered: the valleys are filled in with the
peaks. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
