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From: bitman1 on 12 Jul 2008 20:07
Anybody know what type of microphone was liklely to be used on an AM
Top 40 station back in the 1960's? Condensor? Ribbon type? Thanks!

David
From: Scott Dorsey on 12 Jul 2008 21:29
<bitman1(a)aol.com> wrote:
>Anybody know what type of microphone was liklely to be used on an AM
>Top 40 station back in the 1960's? Condensor? Ribbon type? Thanks!

Depends where it was in the country and what kind of programming it
did. For much of the sixties, the RCA ribbons were king and they
didn't really start getting replaced in a lot of stations until the
Sennheiser 421 started taking over in the seventies. (Then everyone
dumped their 421 to get an RE-20 a few years later).

However, some stations went for a more aggressive sound, and a lot
of DJs by the end of the era became very much more aggressive and so
more rugged mikes started coming in. In small markets like this one,
it meant those horrible ice cream cones.

Remember that top 40 radio in 1961 was totally different than top 40
radio in 1969. Rock and Roll came in with a vengeance and eventually
displaced almost everything else.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
From: J. Porter Clark on 13 Jul 2008 11:49
bitman1(a)aol.com writes:

>Anybody know what type of microphone was liklely to be used on an AM
>Top 40 station back in the 1960's? Condensor? Ribbon type? Thanks!

At the little Top 40 station I worked at--and my father
owned--in 1968-1969, the main mic was an RCA 77DX. I don't know
why. Our Cheap Engineer kept complaining that the DJs were
destroying the ribbon.

The production room had a Shure mic that looked like an SM57
but probably wasn't. Everybody hated it, at least as a vocal
mic, which was how we were using it. Too much proximity effect,
and keeping out popped Ps and breath noises was impossible. We
couldn't back up from the mic because the tiny room (smaller
than the restroom) was too "live." It was a mess. We tolerated
it because the guy who did most of the commercials was hung up
on cart-machine reverb and basically ruined the sound anyway.

It was an extremely low-budget operation. We were a small-town
1 kW station that was in decline due to the rise of FM.

--
J. Porter Clark <jpc(a)porterclark.com>
From: Scott Dorsey on 13 Jul 2008 12:30
J. Porter Clark <jpc(a)porterclark.com> wrote:
>The production room had a Shure mic that looked like an SM57
>but probably wasn't. Everybody hated it, at least as a vocal
>mic, which was how we were using it. Too much proximity effect,
>and keeping out popped Ps and breath noises was impossible. We
>couldn't back up from the mic because the tiny room (smaller
>than the restroom) was too "live." It was a mess. We tolerated
>it because the guy who did most of the commercials was hung up
>on cart-machine reverb and basically ruined the sound anyway.

Was it silver, grey-green, or the modern SM-57 color?

>It was an extremely low-budget operation. We were a small-town
>1 kW station that was in decline due to the rise of FM.

As early '69? Wow.

What was your airchain like?
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
From: RD Jones on 13 Jul 2008 18:06
On Jul 12, 7:07 pm, bitm...(a)aol.com wrote:
> Anybody know what type of microphone was liklely to be used on an AM
> Top 40 station back in the 1960's? Condensor? Ribbon type? Thanks!

Very unlikely to be a condensor.
A few held onto their RCA ribbons.
More likely to be an EV dynamic such as the 666.
We had 666s in on-air, news and production.

I joined the station in the early '70s, but know for a fact the
EVs were in use for a long time before that.

rd
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