Would you rather (C37 choices)

Willie Nelson - Teatro too.  Seems to be one of Lanois' favorites

Sounds like it would be in my prices range! You mentioned lowering the noise floor? I’m not sure how others feel about it but I’m all for modern improvements! A lower noise floor would be great

Do it!  The other 2 clones from bigger makers are well over that price range. 

First off a lot of the Frank lore of the c37 and any mic for that matter is based on photos, the problem with this that you can’t really tell what’s a staged publicity photo’s where an art director was in charge and what was an actual session photo.

Most of the stories about Frank that I have heard, and most of these pre date Universal’s move east, hey I’m a Midwest guy. The heart of this is why Puttman moved west, Frank didn’t care what mic was used, Frank just cared that it sounded good, he wasn’t easy to please but didn’t really get technical it was on the engineer of the day to make it sound good. I know there were periods where it was a 49, a C37, various RCA’s the later Capital days with the u48. A lot of this was because Frank had a reputation for not being easy to work with so it was best to run with what worked the last time, and this is how stories of “Franks mic came to be. If you were a staff guy who had a session with Frank you knew that particular 48 worked with Frank so you would run with it.
I love Sony mics, and part of the reason for that is compared to AKG and Neumann other than the C800 they have been affordable. This is the same reason that back in the day the Japanese mics had a reputation of being cheap lesser mics. Those who took the chance to use them found them to be equal to the Germans. I have often been tempted to try some of the Panasonic/ National offerings to see if these also flew under the radar. The thing with all the Japanese manufactures othe than Sanken is that for every C37 there are 5 cheap consumer models, for instance look at the Fostex Printed Ribbons really hard to convince people that the guys who came up with the $200 cassette 4 track had some great mics ( and speaker components not to be confused with the Foster compression drivers).

The Sonys get a bad rap because Sony pretty much could care less about supporting its old mics and a lot of those FET Sonys suffer from Sony’s not being service friendly. The cost / exclusivity of the Josephson and honestly most not knowing we had reasonable alternatives from the likes of Tim Campbell.

Who are the “Bigger makers”?

lol.  I realise this isn't a measuring contest.  I just thought I might have missed something and a larger manufacturer had started to make the C37a. Realistically though, our output is likely more than both of these businesses combined.  A huge chunk of our business is capsules.  Our own machine shop in our own factory has made over 10,000 parts for capsules in the first 7 months of this year and counting.  Add that to a couple of thousand of our own mics each year and that keeps us busy!

The c37ATT would be a fun project that gives us an excuse to make another capsule! (actually 2 per mic!)

Well one of them only has one mic and my hunch is to say they manufacture it is probably a stretch 😁

Oh and Ben those machining capabilities were the reason I thought of you in the first place, I can’t think of anyone else who build us a “tribute” / “ Classic” reproduction who would be capable of doing as much in house, keep the price down and deliver the quality.

I'd be interested in one.

Eric nailed it Tonelux and Mojave. (see below)

What I meant by bigger is not small shops doing basically one off type things like Barbiaric (sp?) 

Yeah Tonelux and Mojave are not doing those type of numbers.  Hell, even here in Central IL we always had 10 57s and ten 58s in stock.  Most no brainer sales ever. 

Count me in!