Microphones - EV Sound Spot 644

[MNicolai]

So I just came across two of these 644's, and now I'm presented with a question. What should I do with them? I don't have cables, and they appear to be a very unique cable, so I think I'll have to make the cable myself, which is no biggie. Is it worth it though? Has anyone used one of these? Are they any good?

Datasheet Here: http://www.coutant.org/ev644/ev644.pdf

[waynehoskins]

Never used one, though I've seen pictures of them in the catalogs and history for years.

It's a dynamic shotgun, so it's good for whatever you'd want to use that for. The connector should be an Amphenol MC4(M, I think?) that's available under the WPI name now from places like Allied and Newark and Mouser.

[MNicolai]

Ouch, $22 for a single plug, and I have two of these. Plus shipping, I'm not spending $50 on a couple of microphones I don't know are any good. I think I'll do a temporary setup first to jump the pins to an XLR cable before I go spending money. That way I can establish if these are mic's I'll realistically want to use or not. If not, then I'll just let them remain as collector's items.

[soundlight]

I'm pretty sure that we use one of those as a monitoring mic for the stage to feed the backstage speakers (we have 2 unmatched shotgun mics in the first beam lighting position). If it's not that, it's something very similar and slightly newer, but I know for a fact that it's EV and it has the same grille pattern and mount as this one. For monitoring applications, it works great. It does have quite an odd connector, though...

[FMEng]

EV used that connector on a lot of microphones designed in the 1950's and 1960's. It pre-dated the wide acceptance of the Canon XLR.

Here is some nice information about that microphone.
Electro-Voice Model 644

[TimmyP1955]

In the old days, when someone goofed you would sometimes see a 644 pop into the top of the picture on The Tonight Show. Must have worked pretty well for them to use the mic.

[FMEng]

Originally Posted by TimmyP1955

In the old days, when someone goofed you would sometimes see a 644 pop into the top of the picture on The Tonight Show. Must have worked pretty well for them to use the mic.

Well, sort of. In that era, TV sound was mostly crap, although the Tonight Show was always a leader. TV sound was mono, and heard on small, cheap paper cone speakers driven by amps of less than a watt. All they cared about was that it was intelligible. Wireless mics were not good enough, and there were very few shotgun mics on the market, so the 644 was about their only choice to get the job done. Either that, or the host had hold a mic.

TV sound is sometimes still crap, but stereo, home theater, and digital transmission have forced a fair amount of improvement. Now if we could just teach them to use a decent AGC-limiter again....

[waynehoskins]

Originally Posted by FMEng

TV sound is sometimes still crap, but stereo, home theater, and digital transmission have forced a fair amount of improvement. Now if we could just teach them to use a decent AGC-limiter again....

Now, when TV sounds like crap, it's not the equipment's fault. It's certainly the operator.

Seems like they compress everything to, if not past, the wall these days, especially gameshows. The mix is crap and the compressors being downstream, the applause ducks the host. Same with music, the hot uncompressed vocals duck out the music when they hit that hard limiter. Ugh.

[FMEng]

Originally Posted by waynehoskins

Now, when TV sounds like crap, it's not the equipment's fault. It's certainly the operator.

Seems like they compress everything to, if not past, the wall these days, especially gameshows. The mix is crap and the compressors being downstream, the applause ducks the host. Same with music, the hot uncompressed vocals duck out the music when they hit that hard limiter. Ugh.

These days, the crap award goes to most commercially mastered CD's and anything MP3. Peak limiters and clippers are way over employed by mastering engineers in pursuit of "competitive loudness." Ack!