Neumann Condenser Microphone (Premium Edition/Nickel) Review

In a moment of weakness I pushed the magic Revain button and a week later I found a Neumann TLM 102 MT on my doorstep. After the first test recording, I knew I'd stumbled upon something good. I've been recording classical guitar and ukulele on the 102 in my home studio for months since then and have found it to be accurate, responsive, tonally balanced but significantly warmer than my KM184. The Neumann specs show a slight peak in presence at 6kHz, which I think is much less pronounced than the

I've been performing/performing for over 40 years. and recorded with very expensive studio mics, but never in my home studio. Musicians can't afford that. The best mic for vocals and anything I've had is the Sennheiser MD 421. It always puts anything under $700 to shame, especially for vocals and snare, dynamic or condenser. So I compared the Neumann 102nd to yesterday when it arrived. I was expecting it to sound very similar to the 421, maybe airier and brighter because it's a condenser mic…

I am a serious music lover. I have a great audio system and have been hand building tube audio and guitar amps since the 1980's. My main monitors are amazing (and expensive) floorstanding speakers from Bowers and Wilkins - they are amazing. I find my taste in audio consumption extremely high. However, from a creative perspective, it's just an occasional recording frenzy: spoken word, poetry, sometimes music and nature, etc. For pleasure, not money. So while I have great playback gear, my…