I got a U87 a while back that was in really bad shape and wanted to see what I could make out of it, wound up overhauling the entire circuit and probably put about 20 hours into the thing chasing a ghost. Ah, old mics. The mic was built around 1981 and is one of the earlier battery box U87’s. The K87 in there is absolutely filthy and while it doesn’t sound bad, I wanted to put a new capsule in the mic just to see where the circuit was *really* at. Think I got this one sounding pretty good.
I had been curious about BeesNeez Microphones for a while, there aren’t many people out there machining their own capsules and anyone who can hover over a lathe and measure to a thou will always have my respect. Figured this presented a good excuse to check out their capsules and Im quite impressed with the K8 that made its way up here from Down Under.
Pretty informal listen, just set up the mic in the control room, plugged it into a channel amp and fed that to a RME UFX, recorded in Pro Tools 10, MP3 bounced to disk. No compression or processing, didnt even do any gain matching, wanted to see *exactly* how close the capsules compared. Made the first recording with the Neumann, popped the capsule out, put the BeesNeez back in it’s place, plugged it back in and hit record. It’s the same mic in the same head assembly for both capsules.
I quite like the sound of the K8 and IMO it sounds great next to the old K87.
Both sound excellent through the mic pre in the Channel Amp.
Each clip has an example of the Cardiod, Omni and Figure 8 patterns. Have a listen:
U87i w original Neumann K87 Capsule:
[audio:https://awtac.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/u87neumanncapsule.mp3|titles=U87 Neumann K87 Capsule]U87i w new Beesneez K8 Capsule:
[audio:https://awtac.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/u87beezneezcapsule.mp3|titles=U87 BeesNeez K8 Capsule]Mug Shot, with the K8 installed:
