STC 4113A RIBBON MICROPHONE, 1960's

Ribbon Microphone for Public Address systems made by STC, it has a low
impedance of only 5 ohms and is small light and very robust.
The internal construction is of high quality, the Ribbon is fed by a horn,and is only 5mm across. No other information is known by the museum.


Nortel Collection

Your comments:

• Hi, this is actually a ribbon microphone, the cheapest one produced by STC. STC was a very reputable microphone maker, which made some classic studio microphones for the BBC and at some point sold their microphone manufacturing section to Coles, which still produces those microphones today. The 4113 was probably intended for sound reinforcement, but was still very nicely built, as you say. There were different versions of this microphone with different impedances and some of them with an integrated desk microphone stand.
  
  Unusually for a ribbon microphone it has a cardioid pick-up pattern. I think the horn built into it is a resonator meant to increase the high frequency range of the microphone.
  
  I have two and I use them for music recording, they do sound quite nice and have a retro-sound that is very beautiful. Thanks to the cardioid pattern they allow to catch the source sound quite cleanly without capturing the ambient sounds.
  I have found several references to it on-line:
  Two microphones like this one were used at the Royal Albert Hall for many years,
  
  These mic's may be later than the 50s, despite their look.
  According to the old Gramophone magazine, these mic's were present at the 1966 and 1967 audio fairs, where they were compared with other STC microphones (including one of their old condensers) and used to record a string quartet (1966), piano and cymbal crashes (1967).
  You can find that in their on-line archive:
  http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/June%201966/98/774181
  http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/May%201967/108/770366
  http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/April%201966/118/792864
  I hope this is useful!
  .......... Santiago Calvo Ramos, , 23rd of April 2010
  
  

A1351