Interesting M7 Discussion...

You're too stressed about your mic not being the one. Your voice always sounds great. This mic is plenty good for you. Sounds great. No need to lust after a different mic.

Martin John Butler, you are so concerned about optimizing your recording chain, it almost hurts to read it so often. ;-)
OK, so i will go a bit off-topic, because i feel the need to do so...
You can perfectly concentrate on music again, i don't think your gear is holding you back from anything. Sure, i understand if you are considering you could profit from using a sta-level or an even better mic than the one you already have. But you already have a fine mic thru an excellently chosen recording chain.
Also, when i read you do a dozen different mixes of the same song and then have to decide which one of all those is the best...i would go crazy! I might evolve a mix perhaps, do an OTB and a Mixbus version. Compare them to the raw mix in Sonar, decide for one way to go and evolve this and discuss with my brother or the singer...
The time i am at mix no. 6 or 7 i already have 2-3 favorites, and it becomes clearer which one is best the further i work on it. I try hard not to diversify and get lost in options but stay focused and get a clearer picture of what works and what doesn't. And what serves the song best.
Just saying. I am pretty sure you could trust your equipment and your ability to record great music much more and dare more obvious creative decisions with more (self-)confidence. You are an artist and you have something to say.
Everything else is just there to serve this purpose.
I mean it in a very encouraging way.
I know how it is, if you think too much about every aspect and lose the focus on the music and message, from own experience.
You have your own style and a unique voice and expression and this is nothing money can buy and is by far the most important thing for what you try to achieve. None of the mixes i heard from you suffered from bad recording or inferior gear really, for you it is all about creative decisions again already, songwriting details, arrangements, expressing yourself, get the best performance out of yourself etc...
This is totally meant as a positive and constructive feedback, hope you don't get this wrong...

Hmm. I don't even hear the issues Klaus brought up.
No way i think the highs are rolling off too soon or beeing too low in volume, or the too upfront higher mids or boxy bass. Sorry, i can not hear all this in the samples and recordings i listened to. E.g. i hear a very nice top end, no clue what KH is referring to...but again, maybe i have just a cheap taste...
I strongly guess Mr. Thiersch does not feel a need to respond to such comments. If i was him, i wouldn't. The vast majority of his customers are perfectly happy with what they get. In many shootouts with other aftermarket capsule manufacturers his capsules are in the top line.
I did not read complaints about the re-skinning jobs he did for alot of people. So what?
At the moment, i see Mr. Thiersch somehow in the same position as Tim Campbell is with his aftermarket CK-12 type capsule...

I have an 80's Gefell mic with M7..

I prefer the blueline in the U47 actually.  They both have the same midrange character, but the blueline just has a bit more top end, likely due to the age of the PVC in the Gefell M7.

I wouldn't stress over it though, the blue line is well worth the money.

I've said it a bunch of times over the years but I also used to be heavy into DIY and pushing for perfection.  I once believed that no corporate product was ever good enough and that everything needed modification or improvement.

It took a handful of years to finally admit to myself that it was only choice-supportive bias.  I modified something, therefor it MUST be better.. Right?

Now, I look for the average opinion because I realize that there will be fanboys defending a product to the end of times.  There will also be people who will bash a product simply because it clashes with their beliefs.  The average opinion is usually from regular users who just want a good product for a good price.

So the Blueline might not be the "best" capsule out there, based on someone's opinion...  


One person does not make a consensus no matter how much they want you to believe they alone know everything.

(too many folks run around pushing opinions as facts, regardless of their knowledge or experience.  The biggest downfall to "experts" is that they stop listening to others as they grow more set in their ways)



But the blueline isn't going to be the worst capsule out there either.

However, the average opinion is that the Blueline is a great capsule that recreates a lot of the classic M7 sound and performs extremely well.

I bought mine based on that alone.  


I installed it, it worked great, and that's where I stopped thinking of the mic in terms of a sum of parts, and started thinking of it as a tool to get what I want from the singer's mouth to my recorder.

Thanks phrazemaster, that means a lot to me.

Kcat makes a good point. What we consider a great mic, is often quite old. Obviously some of the difference between then and now might be better or different parts not being available, (like the original tubes), and part of it may simply be age. Whatever factor age creates, we can't reproduce that without skewing the natural tone now, can we?

Is there a great example of a classic recording someone can think of, where the character of a U47 is fully revealed? I'd love to hear a documented example of a relatively new U47, and compare as best we can to a new top of the line DIY 47.

Exactly my experience. I think - just like every mic - it works on some voices and not on others. Although, my experiences with Shannon's work is that it's the quality of the midrange - the ability to not pinch when hit hard - the consistency of the frequency range no matter the dynamic. My MK-U47 with Shannon's cap probably has a little more 400-1kHz midrange info than I want, but it's good midrange info. I can push it and it doesn't hurt, I can dig it out and it's perfect. Oh - and btw, it's a K47. I think I remember a couple of people saying the M7 was a little brighter on average than the K47 - that has been my experience too...My perception was that it was the other way around.

Yep! That's exactly how I feel John, thanks.

jcoutou1, I've seen many photos of Sinatra with U47's, but recently I'd heard he preferred a Sony mic I was unfamiliar with. Perhaps it was something Sony produced in the 60's.

Oliver Archut said my mic was a cross between a U47 and an M49. So I listened to some very clean examples of M49's, one being Norah Jones' first album, one a recent live Neil Young recording with an orchestra. I gotta say, my mic sounds like a dead ringer for that Norah Jones mic. So the M7 capsule can't be anywhere near as bad as Klaus suggests if mine sounds so close to those classic mics. I suppose you can say I got a "good one", but somehow I doubt that mine's anything special when compared to any other M7 Blueline.

I'll try to enjoy my mic for now, and keep looking around to see if I find one that's an even better fit. I'd keep it if I could afford to, my wife loves it, and it sounds perfect for her voice.

I do… fantastic.
*might* be available for sale… if I can bring myself to it. 

Here ya go, C37A: Looks like a Neumann and an Elam 251 had a baby.

I adore that mic on egtr… only condenser i've ever liked in front of a cab b/c it's not bright or harsh. captures the full tone. ok, i better stop talking about it now or I'll never list it!

I broke down and I'm ordering a Blueline.

Between all y'all's great comments, Max Kirchner at GDIY saying he thinks the Bluelines are great, and Svart's astute comment that the "average opinion is usually right" (reminds me of Occam's razor for science!), plus, well, the much lower hit on the pocket book, I'm going Blue!

I'll try to remember to report back here my impressions in a few weeks after I get mine and have it installed in my upcoming U47 clone of Max's, the MK-U47.

Thanks!

Mike

PS - oh yeah, another deciding factor - in discussions with Andreas Grosser, he said he likes the Bluelines even better than some vintage M7's!

I wanna see AG and Klaus duke it out lol!

I am fond of that microphone. It has quite an unusual capsule, which is quite different from KK47/67/CK12. It also has a unique mechanical shutter of changing pattern to omni. Only two other capsules come to mind--Shure and Schoeps--but both are SDC. Indeed, it is much harder to make a good LDC with solid patterns using this approach and Sony does it very well and has many other very cool features. It also has an unusually high DC bias of 140V, but even so, its low output still results in quite high noise. 

Best, M