I thought I’d write a quick post on this in case some of you experience a similar problem, it may save you hassle and expense.
I have a pair of AKG C414B mics, they are real workhorses and as the cliche goes, the studio Swiss army knife. On top of that they are solidly built and very reliable. But sometimes things go wrong. I recently did a bit of drum recording for myself and was listening back when I noticed a faint but distinct mains frequency hum on the overheads (my 414s). I had them running through my home made Neve preamps and then into a pair of line-level inputs on my UA Apollo interface. I automatically assumed the hum was coming from my home-made preamps rather than the solid, Austrian-engineered AKG mics. I duly set out to test, swapping cables, microphones and trying various configs of phantom power on / off on each channel, until it was clear that the problem lie with one of the 414s.
Faced with an expensive repair, I thought, well, let’s open it up and see if anything obvious was up with it.
Hmmm, lots of surface mount components and no obvious signs of trouble. A quick Google search led me to this post. Not exactly the same problem but similar, so I read on. Turns out that the grill / mesh of the mic connected to ground via pin 1 of the XLR forms a Faraday Cage, which helps shield the high-impedance capsule from EMI noise in the room. The mesh makes contact mechanically and if this connection is a little dodgy, it won’t work and there will be noise. I tested the resistance between pin 1 on the XLR and the mesh, it was a variable which immediately suggests a problem. I went about gently squeezing the base of the mesh in an attempt to improve the mechanical connection. Checking again, the resistance was now consistently minimal, so time to test. I put the body back on and plugged it in, powered it up and hey presto, no noise. Phew!…. So if you’re having this kind of issue, try this first, the mic is easy enough to open , just remove the 2 screws on the base (star driver or a flat head screw driver will do) and the smaller cross head screw in the XLR connector base and then slide the body off.
