Sony F-V300 and C38b microphones

This unusual Sony microphone (left) looks like the younger brother of a C38b (right) or maybe a C48 condenser mic, and shares the same high build quality and some hardware components with these mics. But in actual fact this is a high quality cardioid pattern dynamic microphone, model F-V300.

Inside, the microphone is very simple, with just a capsule in the top compartment, and the on/off switch and transformer wired to a printed circuit board below. The fixed grey output cable looks to be the same type as found on the C38b.

The capsule is suspended from 8 small springs to act as an internal shockmount, which seems to work well, in conjunction with the yoke, to acoustically decouple the microphone element.
This example has some traces of foam around the element, indicating that an internal windshield has at some time been removed.

The label states that the mic is nominally of 1kΩ impedance, although in practice seems lower than this and it has no problems driving standard low-Z microphone preamps. The output is strong and clear across the range, and the output is similar in level and detail to a healthy EV RE20, although with a more pronounced proximity effect.

As far as we know, this microphone was only marketed in Japan, but if you have any information to confirm or deny this, or in fact any information about this mic at all, please let us know!

UPDATE 22/2/11
This microphone has become a bit of a favourite for guitar cabs – it seems to have just the right amount of   proximity boost for that application, giving clear and solid presence to the lower end. It also makes a decent tom mic.