In any case I do like what I'm hearing with the cap swap. Yellow wire is the other side of the balanced signal.  These are our targets for removal.Â. When I build the second unit, I will change that out first and test.Â, Clip2 - Female Vocals - mods + Film Cap at C7Â, Because of the blue surface mount board in this mic, I venture to say that most people are not going to be into ripping that out and re-biasing, weather to rebias the K170 or to bias a new J305. To keep the spring from sliding around I ended up putting a small sticker on the slick metal plate to give it more friction (not shown. MXL mics deliver high quality sound on par with far more expensive mics. It is however not a clone of any other microphone and is a new cool approach to microphone circuit design. It looks like a blob of solder but there is actually a tiny silver wire in there.Â, I was uncertain what effect this may have. This allows me to move stuff around in the room and generally get what I'm looking for.  Left is original , right is the mod.  So I may try switching to a 1u cap for C7 in the future to see how the circuit reacts.  A little reverse engineering on the back side is going to be necessary.Â, I didn't want to draw a schematic for the back side at this point, let's go for the low hanging fruit and see if that helps.  If we assume a worse case scenario of 600 ohms output impedance that puts the rolloff frequency at about 10K. Too bad there were no Elnas in the signal path.Â.  If that fails to improve sound quality to my liking,  I may just rip out the transistor stage altogether and simply build a tube mic from the ground up. I was being very cautious about the heat to the mylar and I ended up making cold solder joints here. How are ratings calculated? The negative lead is tied to ground as well so that doesn't make much sense, and feels like some last minute Mickey mouse bandaid. But it should be interesting all the same.Â, We will be sampling some drums. MXL V69M EDT MOGAMI Edition Large Diaphragm Tube Condenser Microphone. One shunts the positive signal to ground and the other shunts the positive to negative. Blue Jinn. Mic settings when gain is matched in Pro Tools.  With tube mics it's also a good idea to avoid having the approximate 200V exposed as well. Do the signal caps FIRST. I opted to remove the spring from the white piece and extend it a little bit. Is the presence of film at that location enough to offset possible effects of the smaller value cap?Â, a 1uf Film Cap that might be able to be sandwiched between the mic's circuit boards, The yellow cap in this photo is C3 and the two blue caps closest are C19 on the left and C7 on the right. Safety first! The mic is VERY sensitive so any cold solder joints, even though they may tone out, will not work. Not better or worse to me, just different.Â, PART 2 - For the second part of this update we are going to get rid of the electrolytic output cap. This YouTube video features a shootout against a vintage Neumann U-47 and a vintage Neumann U-67 in Clinton Recording Studios' Studio B with New York artist McGowan. The main complaint is that the Chinese don't seem to bias these correctly. I was being very cautious about the heat to the mylar and I ended up making cold solder joints here. Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2015. Replace C7 with a high quality 2.2u 250V cap (film if you can fit - SEE UPDATE 1 at end of article)Â, 2. Chorus from Any More.Â, Acoustic - Stock - http://www.mark-o-matic.com/media/Acoustic-all-stock.wav, Acoustic - mods http://www.mark-o-matic.com/media/Acoustic-all-mods.wav, At this point Im starting to be pretty darn happy with how the modded mic is sounding.Â, Conclusions ? Burn in time was only about an hour at this point. The MXL V69 ME, is a Chinese Manufactured Tube Mic. I must have done something wrong. The mic now sounds much more like what I'd expect a K47 mic to sound like. MXL V69M Mullard Mod I have a MXL V69 Mogami Edition I bought couple years ago. I've compared data sheets already and its possible the existing FET is biased in a region that could allow the J309 to be dropped in, but I'm not going to hold my breath, and expect a bias tweak to be needed.  The flat side now points towards the tube.Â, Results ? … The value MXL used as a coupling cap for C7 at 2.2u led me astray, as I feel that is a ridiculously large value in that location, and a much smaller value will do nicely without sacrificing low end, and probably fit physically. If these cages are not in place the mic wont work correctly, or in some cases will not work at all  So you CAN'T test with the headbasket off. The V69 back side showing final gain stage.  A little reverse engineering on the back side is going to be necessary.Â, http://www.mark-o-matic.com/media/fv-6-orig.wav, http://www.mark-o-matic.com/media/fv-6-mods.wav, - I think this mic really excels on guitar cabs.  In any case, I figured whatever I have with the Panasonic is better than what came stock in the mic.Â.  I wanted to see what the cap change might have done BEFORE I swapped out the capsule.Â, TECH NOTE - I no longer own any pres that are not tube based, nor do I own any rack pres that haven't been modded or tweaked by me somehow. Certainly not what I was expecting, and not much difference from my initial caps only tests. Stay tuned.Â, Lets talk about FETs for a second. So much so that I suspect simply changing that cap and nothing else will probably have a beneficial result. Stay tuned.Â, I was thinking about how to fit a large film cap into the mic and I realized that I have been considering the sections individually but not the sum of all parts together. Michael Vecchio of The Deli Magazine reviews the OktavaMod MXL v69 Tube Condenser Mic Modification.  I opted for a 47u replacement over the 22u to help boost low end.  These discrepancies have historically made the 5963 a somewhat unpopular tube for 12AU7 applications. No room in the mic for a larger cap, what to do ?Â, Luckily this particular mic has a power supply, and maybe there is some room in there ?