Telefunken USA M80

Though designed primarily as a live vocal mic, Telefunken also recommend the M80 for studio applications and for work with guitars, horns and percussion. By way of cost, an M80 will set you back around twice the price of Shure's ubiquitous SM58, which is still not a lot if it lives up to its claims.

There's nothing obviously radical about the design; the moving-coil capsule uses a low-mass mylar diaphragm with attached voice-coil, and this feeds a good-quality transformer (made by AMI/TAB-Funkenwerk, the same company who build the transformers for Telefunken's studio mics) to provide the necessary impedance matching and balanced output. The lighter diaphragm and voice coil should mean less inertia and a better high-frequency response. A good-quality audio transformer is also important to retain the audio quality of the capsule, especially at the low end of the spectrum.

Proximity bass boost is a fact of life with cardioid-pattern mics such as this one, but the designers have done their best to keep it to a minimum. They've also worked to optimise the cardioid pickup pattern so as to minimise feedback problems, and the frequency response is quoted as 30Hz to 18kHz, though looking at the postage stamp-sized graph, this seems to be measured at the ±20dB points or thereabouts, not the usual ±3dB points. I'd estimate that, measured conventionally, the frequency response would be closer to 200Hz to 16kHz, with the low-end response tapering off below 200Hz in the usual way to compensate for the proximity effect when the mic is used close-up. A broad presence peak extends from a couple of kHz upwards, rising to around +6dB. While such specifications provide some clues as to the mic's overall tonal balance, the only real way to judge a mic's performance is to try it, as there are many more factors than simple frequency response to take into account, as our practical tests confirmed.

Tested first in the studio, it produced a well-balanced, gently flattering vocal sound, and the fact that its presence peak is fairly wide and gentle stops it sounding too aggressive while still making the top end sound quite lively. Handling noise is low, providing the mic is handled normally, and the susceptibility to popping is also what you'd expect from a mic of this format — no problem if you have a half-decent vocal technique, but if you are a Phoenix Nights-style presenter you can make it pop by working too close if you try.

For a practical test I took the mic to the local open mic night where it was used by a number of male and female performers, through an ancient but still game PA system comprising a pair of Peavey HiSys 2 cabs and a QSC power amp. I mention this because the characteristics of the speaker affect the perceived characteristics of the mics used through them. In comparison with the rather old Shure Unidyne that normally takes on the job, the M80 was noticeably brighter and extremely clear sounding, without any trace of 'phasey honk' — confirming that the paper spec doesn't tell the whole story. It also had a significantly better than average resistance to feedback, though with one particularly bright-sounding female singer, I needed to dip the EQ at around 5kHz to stop her sounding too harsh. I didn't notice any proximity effect tonal variations unless the singer got right on top of the microphone, so no problem in that area. For most of the singers who performed that night the M80 worked fine with little or no EQ, and nobody had any hint of popping problems until the last act of the night when a male singer/guitarist managed to coax a few pops and bangs out of it — but then he would probably have had the same effect on any mic as you need to develop a singing technique to use any microphone effectively. By the end of the evening everyone involved was well impressed with the mic, with at least one of the singers making serious enquiries as to where she could buy one.