Vintage Friday English version 10-08-2023

This Vintage Friday I’m going to tell you all about a French microphone, the Melodium 75A.

Melodium was a French microphone brand  made in Paris, at 296 rue Lecourbe 15eme Paris to be excact .

Melodium was a reputable brand at the time and they produced the 75A from about 1948 to 1958. The frequency response is from 50Hz to 10kHz. The impedance was very low, about 10 ohms.

This microphone was used by well-known artists such as Edith Piaf and Django Reinhardt. If you look around on the www you can find several Django purists who make recordings with the Melodium 75A.

Then you also might notice that they sound not as bad as you initially might expect. There is a reason for that.

When listening to old audio recordings, people often think that the mediocre to poor sound quality is due to the microphone. That is a misconception. It is usually much more due to the sound carriers that were used at the time, such as e.g. tape, wire and shellac.

You’d be surprised how many vintage/ old microphones still perform well to this very day.

Having that said, a frequency range of up to 10kHz cannot be compared to modern microphones, which have a much a higher frequency range.

The version in the photos is of course from my private collection and is a somewhat earlier model. It does not yet have a microphone connector, but you could screw the bare wires directly onto the microphone.

If you have become curious, go to the www and listen to more videos and audio recordings that you can find there.

If you feel like it you can leave a comment on this blog, I would like it anyway :).

In addition, you can always send an email with your questions or comments to: info@noiseflooraudio.nl

See you next Vintage Friday with another nice microphone from my collection.