NeumannBerlin Microphone U 47 User Manual

neumann.berlin  
the microphone company  
U 47 The Legend  
For approximately 20 years Neumann had manufactured  
and sold throughout the world the condenser microphone  
CMV 3, also known as the “Neumann-Bottle”. Building on  
its success it became time to start something new.  
The cardioid M 7 microphone capsule had been manufac-  
tured for many years with two equal diaphragms fixed on  
both sides of a perforated center electrode which is also  
provided with a number  
of cavities on both sides  
.One of the membranes is  
gold coated and thus elec-  
trically active. This mem-  
brane is directed towards  
the sound source.  
The sound coming from  
the front causes move-  
ment of the front mem-  
brane and reaches the in-  
ner side of the rear mem-  
brane  
through  
the  
perforations in the electrode. The sound also reaches the  
outside of the rear membrane. The acoustic properties  
of the center electrode cause the forces acting on the rear  
membrane to be equal in size, but opposite in direction.  
Therefor, the rear membrane does not move and does not  
produce any electrical signal. For sound arriving from be-  
hind, the rear membrane moves and the front membrane  
does not. As a consequence, the microphone does not re-  
spond to rear sound, and  
the directional character-  
istic is cardioid.  
Both capsule halves thus  
act as a cardioid capsule  
and led Neumann to  
make the rear membrane  
electrically active by coat-  
ing it with gold too.  
When connecting both  
cardioid halves in parallel,  
the capsule produces an  
omni directional pattern.  
If only one membrane is  
connected, the microphone works as described above as a  
cardioid.  
which may be partially responsible for its legendary lon-  
gevity by providing a low humidity environment for the  
capsule. This was certainly not responsible for the “full,  
rich and warm sound” the U 47 is famous for, a sound qual-  
ity still highly regarded in our days. Many recording studi-  
os are proud to claim ownership of a working U 47.  
During the 1950’s Neumann microphones also were sold  
through Telefunken, and carried the Telefunken logo. Thus  
the U 47 was also known as the “Telly”. It was reported  
about “The Voice”, Frank Sinatra, that he wouldn’t sing  
without his “Telly”, the Neumann U 47. From the Bar-  
clay Studios in Paris, which were technically supervised  
by Gerhard Lehner, we learned of people admiringly claim-  
ing: That’s a microphone to drive nails into walls with.  
Whether this is understood literally or figuratively, it is a  
compliment for the U 47 either way!  
The prerequisites for an easily switchable microphone with  
two directional characteristics were now fulfilled. A steel  
vacuum tube VF 14 M was selected for the impedance  
converter/amplifier, a pentode being operated as triode.  
The microphone was fed with one supply voltage only, from  
which the filament voltage was derived by means of a wire  
wound resistor inside the amplifier housing. Consequently  
the microphone itself produced a fair amount of heat,  
 

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