AKG D-190C
A workhorse dynamic that British dealers kept stacking on the shelf next to the Shures - and priced to undercut them.
Overview
AKG's own advertising called the D-190C "our top selling dynamic." It is a directional moving-coil design pitched at the working P.A. market, not the studio glass case. The copy that ran alongside its illustration in the British trade press made the sales case in a handful of words: ideal for most P.A. systems, serviceable on site, and available with either a Cannon or DIN connector depending on what your desk or amplifier was wired for. That last detail tells you who it was built for. In early-1970s Britain, a band or a village hall might be running a DIN-equipped amp and the local theatre a Cannon-equipped one. A mic that could be ordered either way saved a lot of adapter hunting.
The "directional" label is the important part. AKG was selling omnidirectional dynamics for studio work at the same time, and the D-190C was the directional alternative for live sound. A directional pickup pattern keeps a vocal from dragging in the monitor wedges and the back wall of a hall. The advertising also promised a wide frequency range, but no figure for it survives in the available documentation. Treat "wide" as marketing language, not a measured specification.
The British dealers left a paper trail on pricing. One London-area trade listing in early 1976 advertised the D-190C at £25.10 including VAT and carriage, while a smaller ad in the same publication quoted £18. That spread says more about the era's discount culture than about the microphone. Trade coverage of the period, such as the plugs-and-leads listings in Studio-Sound (January 1974, p.8), shows accessory pricing tabulated alongside the microphones themselves.
A separate dealer's price list showed a recommended retail of £26.00 against a cash price of £21.00, with a £2 surcharge for the high-impedance version. The same list put the D-190C above the D-707C (£22.00) and the D-90C with popshield (£13.00), but well below the D-1200E professional model at £39.00. That makes it a middle rung in AKG's dynamic lineup. An earlier 1973 listing went as low as £15.00 as a special offer. The same pages were moving Shure SM57s at £42.00 and SM58s at £54.00, so the AKG was roughly half the price of the American standards. A band in 1975 could buy two D-190Cs for the cost of one SM58.
Based on the documentation, the D-190C is not a studio condenser. In the same breath, AKG's advertising promoted the C451 FET condenser for television, film, and studio work, and the D-202 and D-224 double-system dynamics for engineers. That left the D-190C the P.A. and general-purpose slot. The "serviceable on site" claim is worth taking seriously. A dynamic with a standard connector was meant to be fixed by a dealer or a competent tech rather than shipped back to the factory, which is what a working band needed.
On the used market the D-190C turns up as a budget vintage dynamic, the kind of thing found in a box of assorted mics at a car boot sale or listed cheaply on auction sites. Expect the usual wear on a decades-old dynamic: a grille that has seen better days, a connector that may need re-soldering, and possibly an element that has lost some output. The DIN-versus-Cannon question follows these mics around. Check which connector a particular example carries before assuming it will plug into a modern XLR input without an adapter.
Anyone chasing documentation will hit one oddity. The available period material is inconsistent about the model designation. The same advertising that illustrates the D-190C also refers to a "D190E" in dealer listings, and the two names appear side by side in the trade pages of the mid-1970s. The sources at hand do not establish whether the E suffix denotes a variant, an impedance option, or simply typographical drift in the advertising. Collectors comparing listings should treat D-190C and D190E as potentially related but not assumed identical until a service document settles it.
No independent measurement of the sound survives in the archive. The one period chunk that mentions the model is a plugs-and-leads price box, not a review. What can be said is what the design implies: a directional dynamic of this class and price was built to make a voice cut through a P.A. without feedback, and the wide-range claim suggests AKG was not confining it to the telephone-band role some cheap dynamics filled. It is a utility microphone, honestly priced, and still findable for less than the cost of a decent cable.
eBay Listings
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.