On 4/29/2014 9:32 AM, Fred Jensen wrote:
As I got closer, I became more and more a bass. Our "anchorman" was right up on top of the mic sitting on his desk.
That characteristic of a mic is called "proximity effect," and is the result of the combining of front and rear openings to a mic capsule to form a directional pattern. Most such mics have a cardioid pattern,named because it is sort of heart-shaped. Most hand held mics intended for live performance are cardioids, and have this characteristic.
In the 1950s, the engineers at Electro-Voice invented a cardioid mic with an additional opening farther down the handle of the mic that greatly reduced proximity effect. That mic, the model 666, came to be known as the "Buchannon Hammer," because it was demonstrated to broadcasters by using it to drive a nail to prove its ruggedness. EV still makes excellent mics using this principle, and they are quite popular in broadcast. One of them, the RE20, is the one you see most often on TV on a boom with a talk radio jock. The mics I use for NCCC meetings are RE16s, a smaller, handheld version that uses the same principle.
Over the years, omnidirectional mics have also been popular with broadcasters, because they have no proximity effect. EV pretty much owns that market too, their model 635A having been a standard for at least 40 years.
And it was one of the two founders of EV, Al Kahn, K4FW, who founded and ran Ten Tec when his partner decided they should sell the biz to a conglomerate. Al was a CW guy. I worked him once.
73, Jim K9YC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
