vintage grundig microphone

M

mksprior

Guest
I just bought a vintage grundig GCM3 microphone dating from around 1956 and I was wondering if anyone knows anything about it. I'm hoping it's a crystal mic, but I'm just not sure.


Any thoughts?

M
 
Might even be a condenser ? ? ?

I can recall a school teacher about that year who had an expensive (tubed) Grundig tape recorder. It came with a LARGE diaphragm condenser mic - about 3 inches diameter! I don't think it had any preamp or impedance converter inside, and presumably it got its polarising voltage from the recorder. Don't know its model number, of course.
 
Here is some Info I found for you on your new Condenser mic...

This is a very common microphone, but what sets it apart is the fact that this is a condensor microphone - not very common for a microphone for the consumer market. The english type is GCM 3, the german name is GKM 17. The model GKM 7 is similar (but rarer), it has a round foot and the grundig emblem in the middle of the grid.
Being a condensor microphone, it required a 100 V polarisation (supplied by some model Grundig tape recorders). From what I have heard, these microphones did a good job, much better than the average crystal mic or even dynamic mic from the same era !
Click to expand...


grundiggcm3.jpg




Cheers


PS: You probably won"t be able to use this Mic with most Mixers as it needs 100V Phantom power but if you are so Inclined you could build a simple Voltage doubler curcuit and Put it in a Small Box with a couple XLR Connector which you would connect between the Mic and the Mixer/Preamp and it would take the 48v Phantom power from your Mixer and convert it to 96v which will run your Mic....

PS#2: here are some more Vintage Mics:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~odemar/microphones/eur-mics.htm
 
Interesting! I've just been testing my GKM 17 (No.150 58702) for recording purposes, and it works well with my small Yamaha AG03 mixing console, supplying 48V phantom power. Recording with Sound Studio app through mixer at maximum rec. level and dB normalized to a 100%, the recording is clearly audilble with acceptable - at least to me - sound quality.
 
I serviced a few Grundig tape machines waaaay back in the day. Those mics were indeed much better than most mics around at the time.

One chap had the full stereo Grundig with two capacitor mics. Made excellent recordings. I too would like to see the DIN pinout.

Dave.
 
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