Myburgh M1

Does Myburgh’s vintage‑inspired valve mic have the potential to become a classic in its own right?

Producer, engineer and connoisseur of high‑end audio gear Andrew Myburgh is a South African now resident in Berlin. For someone looking to build high‑end studio microphones, that’s about the best place you could possibly end up, and Andrew has recruited two of the biggest names in the field, Andreas Grosser and Eckehard Dux, to collaborate on the design of his first product. All three individuals are experts on vintage mics, but, refreshingly, they haven’t set out to recreate a particular model from the past. Instead, they’ve used their joint experience to create something new that builds on those classic designs. The result is the M1: a no‑compromise, multi‑pattern valve capacitor microphone.

...they haven’t set out to recreate a particular model from the past. Instead, they’ve used their joint experience to create something new that builds on those classic designs.

One Love

The review M1 arrived in a black Peli‑type case with cutouts for the power supply, the cable and the wooden box containing the mic itself. Build quality and finishing are exceptionally good, even for something at this price point. Inasmuch as it resembles any individual historic microphone, the M1 is probably closest to the old Neumann Gefell UM57, but with a gloss painted body that recalls the Telefunken ELA M 251, and it really is a work of art. No shockmount is supplied; instead, the cable has an integrated swivel mount, in the tradition of old AKG and Neumann designs, and this too is beautifully engineered, as is the Grosser‑designed PSU.

The capsule in the M1 is built by Siegfried Thiersch, another giant in the world of boutique microphones, and is a recreation of the M7 capsule used in early Neumann M49 and U47 microphones. Thiersch’s version uses a Mylar membrane rather than the PVC of the original, so shouldn’t be affected by the same ageing issues. In the M1, it’s paired with a “Russian military grade long‑life tube” in an apparently novel circuit configuration which uses not one but two custom‑made transformers in the audio path.

The push button at the top left of the PSU engages the M1’s ‘true cardioid’ mode.Like the M49, the M1 offers (almost) continuously variable polar patterns, selected using a detented pot on the power supply. As usual, this ranges from omni at one end to figure‑8 at the other, with cardioid in the middle. And, as on Neumann’s recent reissue of the M49, there’s also the option to operate the M1 in ‘true cardioid’ mode, in which only the front diaphragm of the capsule is in circuit. Compared with selecting the cardioid position on the main pattern dial, this has lower noise. However, whereas Neumann’s implementation can only be switched by opening up the mic, the M1 has a handy button on the front of the PSU. This looks as though it should light up, but doesn’t, and its position is quite hard to determine at a glance. There are no additional controls such as pads or filters.

Developing their own circuitry rather than following templates from the ’40s and ’50s has allowed Myburgh to improve the specifications of the M1 compared with vintage mics. It has a relatively high sensitivity of 24mV/Pa, and even without a pad, can tolerate SPLs of up to 124dB, though what level of distortion is reached at this point is not stated. It also boasts a published self‑noise figure of just 15dBA; I assume this relates to the ‘true cardioid’ mode, but even so, it’s impressively low for a valve microphone. Finally, Myburgh state that their impedance converter or head amplifier circuitry has an “incredibly linear frequency response”, and although there are no published charts for the mic as a whole, a response of 20Hz to 20kHz is claimed.

Gold Standards

Myburgh say that they used well‑maintained examples of the Neumann U47 and U67 as references when designing the M1. I’m not fortunate enough to have such things available for comparison, but if you’re hoping for an exaggerated version of the classic Neumann sound, you might need to recalibrate your expectations. When I think of the definitive large‑diaphragm Neumann designs, what comes to mind is the richness and forward quality of the midrange; they give sources a sense of heft and muscle that allows them to elbow their way to the front of the mix, and in comparison, the low bass and very high frequencies can be slightly subdued. By contrast, the M1 struck me as being supremely balanced, with an openness and natural quality that I hadn’t anticipated. I hesitate to describe it as a ‘bright’ mic — it’s no C800G — but there’s plenty of air, and something very attractive about the way it handles harmonically rich sources.

If you’re expecting a microphone that has two transformers and a valve in the signal path to sound noticeably ‘thick’ or saturated as a consequence, that’s very much not the case with the M1.

Likewise, if you’re expecting a microphone that has two transformers and a valve in the signal path to sound noticeably ‘thick’ or saturated as a consequence, that’s very much not the case with the M1. Like most of the best valve mics, it’s not really a coloured device at all. Rather, the valve circuitry seems to give it just that little bit of natural compression that somehow takes the edge off anything harsh or hard‑sounding, without sounding dark or losing top‑end detail. Valve mics sometimes give away their valve nature through an elevated noise floor, but as the specs imply, that really isn’t an issue with the M1. Even without the true cardioid mode active, self‑noise is a non‑issue in normal use.

Both the sensitivity and the on‑axis tonality of multi‑pattern mics can change significantly depending on the pattern setting. In my experience that’s particularly true of older designs, and it is quite apparent in the Neumann M49 reissue, for example. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the M1 sounds absolutely great in the figure‑8 setting, where the extra proximity effect boost rounds out the low end whilst that rather lovely high end remains largely unchanged, and there was no hint of the peakiness that often creeps in when mics are switched to bidirectional mode. I was slightly less keen on the omni setting on vocals, as it seemed to emphasise the sibilance range a little more, but that same quality made it an excellent choice for instruments such as acoustic guitar. In general, though, the timbre is quite consistent throughout the range, and certainly more so than on the M49.

Visually, the Myburgh M1 embodies an obvious vintage aesthetic. As I’ve already mentioned, the look and feel seem to be loosely modelled after the Neumann Gefell UM57, which likewise uses an M7 capsule; but whereas in this day and age I think you’d only buy a UM57 if you wanted an overtly nostalgic sound, the M1 doesn’t have a noticeably retro quality. It’s not a character mic, just a really good microphone designed and constructed with impressive — some would say obsessive — attention to detail. It absolutely plays with the big boys, and if you’re willing to invest this sort of money in a flagship valve mic, don’t hesitate to audition it. I think you’ll be impressed.