Great pencil microphone from the Japanese, dates around the 1960's
Although not originally intended for the pro audio market, these vintage microphones are often sought after for their "unique" sound - some might say funky others might say they are crap but in the never ending endeavour of the sound engineer to get that "special" sound, they are worth playing around with.
SONY MICROPHONE
Model: F-96
1960'S - 70'S
Technical Specifications:
Element type: dynamic
Pattern: Omni-directional
Frequency response: 80 - 12Khz
Impedance: Low
Sensitivity: -58dB
NO on-off switch, always active
Pencil shaped
Very strong diecast metal casing with an outer cream surface
Nice dynamic capsule, looks to be an aluminium diagraphm not mylar
Inside is an audio transformer, simply marked as LOW
Output is via a fixed lead, 4 metres in length, to a standard 1/4" mono plug
NOTE: this microphone has been completely rewired with a much better quality lead and suitable plug - UNBALANCED. If the new owner wished, this microphone could be converted to a balanced output although this would require a new 2 core lead. As the output is low impedance, it wasn't considered necessary to go to this trouble so it was decided to make the output unbalanced. If ever needed, disassembly of the microphone is not difficult although quite "fiddly" due to the special cable lock used in the base of the microphone.
COSMETIC CONDITION:
Good - Very good. Some surface marks to the case but nothing serious - these cases are very tough and would take a lot of knocking around to get damaged.
One aluminium label is missing (see photograph with the locking screw exposed)
TESTING:
These were used from time to time by our sound engineer but that was a long time ago so I plugged them into a desk and made sure I have nice clean audio, all is good - my only comment is that the output level is quite low.
I made some DC tests of the audio transformer inside the microphone, I no longer have the equipment to check the impedance at various frequencies though.
DC resistance on the capsule side of the transformer: 4 Ohms
DC resistance on the output side of the transformer: 40 Ohms
Audio quality seemed pretty good to my tired old ears although somewhat lower in level than something like a SM58
For more information about these microphones, here is a link to a studio that is "into" vintage microphones and they do list the F-96 as being in their armoury.
https://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/me-in-my-studio-voltaire-twins-625920
“The F96 is the quirky one. It came with a tape machine in the sixties. You can get them for nothing on eBay, they’re so common, but they sound great! Awesome for vocals, guitars and drums. Not as clean as the SM7b but flavour galore if you like the 'Shitty Is Pretty' thing.”
