AKG D-200E
Two capsules in one housing, a 500-cycle crossover, and a price tag of $69 — AKG's "woofer-tweeter" microphone tried to solve the oldest problem in dynamic mics.
Overview
The D-200E is a cardioid dynamic microphone built around a genuinely odd idea: two separate elements in one body, one handling the low end and one the highs, joined through a 500-cps crossover network. AKG's own advertising made the analogy explicit, describing it as the same principle as a two-way speaker system — a tweeter and a woofer, only backwards. The elements are mounted coaxially, and compensating windings are included to cancel stray magnetic fields. The whole system floats inside the outer housing on a shock-mount suspension, which is the kind of detail that matters more on a stage than in a brochure.
The frequency range is rated at 30 to 15,000 cps at ±3 dB, with sensitivity given as −55 dB (re 1 mW/10 dynes/cm²), or 0.16 mV/µbar. Impedance is 200 ohms. The mic measures 7-5/16 inches long by 1-5/8 inches in diameter and weighs 8 ounces. Audio (December 1967, p.85) ran the manufacturer's specifications alongside a look at the internal structure, and the numbers line up with AKG's own literature from the period — a rare case where the advertising copy and the spec sheet agree down to the decimal.
The advantage AKG claimed for the two-element arrangement was linear off-axis frequency response. That's the real argument, and it's a good one. A conventional single-element cardioid tends to get colored as you move off-axis, and the D-200E's split-element design was pitched as a way around that — natural reproduction up to 90° off the microphone axis, per the company's own copy. AKG also claimed no "booming" proximity effect and "virtually no feedback problems," which is marketing language, but the underlying design logic is sound: a dedicated low-frequency element with its own crossover can be voiced to avoid the bass buildup that plagues close-miked single-element dynamics.
Audio (March 1968, p.75) picked up the feedback angle directly, running AKG advertising that framed the D-200E as a way to get "−6 db more silence before feedback" by addressing the problem at the source rather than with filters and attenuators downstream. Whether the number holds up under scrutiny is another question, but the pitch tells you who AKG thought would buy this mic: the working soundman fighting a room.
What the D-200E was positioned as, in AKG's own lineup, was the all-purpose model. The company's advertising placed it alongside the D-224E (the studio version, pitched as duplicating the more desirable characteristics of condenser microphones) and the D-202E (for live and cinema sound stages), with the D-200E described as adding "new dimension to P.A., radio-journalism and recording." That's a broad brief, and it tells you the D-200E was the generalist of the two-way family rather than the specialist.
The mic arrived in the U.S. at a particular moment for AKG distribution. According to the Electronic Marketplace column in the January 1968 Electronics Illustrated, the D-200E was one of the first AKG products to be issued under that name in this country in some time — Norelco, which distributed AKG products, had been using its own name. That's a small piece of commercial history, but it explains why early D-200E documentation sometimes reads like a reintroduction rather than a launch. The mic came with a stand adaptor, 15-foot cable, connector, and case, at $69.
The two-way concept was patented — U.S. Patent #3,204,031, which AKG cited in its advertising as the foundation of the whole line. The patent number is worth noting because it's the kind of thing that shows up in service literature and collector listings, and it confirms the design wasn't a marketing exercise bolted onto an existing mic. The D-200E was built around the patent, not the other way around.
By the late 1970s the D-200E had settled into the role of a working mic rather than a flagship. A 1977 dealer closeout listing from GCG Sound in Lafayette, California, priced the D-200E at $67 — two dollars under the original 1967 list, which tells you the mic held its value about as well as any dynamic of the era. The same listing put the D-190E at $49 and the C-451E at $178, which gives a useful sense of where the D-200E sat in the AKG hierarchy: above the entry-level D-190E, well below the condenser models.
The most interesting later-life appearance is in a drum-miking chart published in DB-Magazine (March 1985, p.28), where the D-200E turns up on hi-hat, rack toms, and floor toms — with a PZM 31-S on kick and left overhead, a DS-35 on snare, and the D-200E handling the right overhead as well. That's a striking assignment for a mic designed in the mid-1960s. Toms and hi-hat are jobs that reward exactly what the two-way design was built to deliver: clean off-axis response and no proximity boom when the mic is clamped close to a drum head. Eighteen years after introduction, engineers were still reaching for it in the same applications AKG had pitched it for.
What the D-200E is not, in any of the surviving documentation, is a mic that generated a formal test-bench review. The period coverage is advertising, specification listings, and usage credits — not lab measurements. That absence is worth flagging honestly. The D-200E's reputation rests on its design logic and its persistence in working gear lists, not on a published frequency-response plot from an independent lab.
For anyone chasing one today, the practical notes are these. The mic is an 8-ounce dynamic with a 200-ohm impedance, which means it will run into virtually any preamp without complaint. The internal shock mounting is a genuine asset on a stand, but it's also a wear point — a mic this old with a floating suspension deserves a careful listen for rattle before it goes on a session. The two-element design means there are more parts inside than a conventional dynamic, and the crossover network is not something a casual repair should disturb. The 15-foot cable and connector that shipped with the original are frequently missing from used examples, so a complete package is worth more than a bare mic. The $69 original price and the $67 closeout price put a ceiling on what these should command today — this is a working tool, not a collector's trophy, and it should be priced accordingly.
The D-200E's place in the AKG story is as the accessible entry point to the two-way concept — the model that brought the patent into P.A. and broadcast work while the D-224E and D-202E handled the studio and stage-film niches. It's a mic that solved a real problem with an unusual solution, sold at a price a working band could afford, and stayed in service long enough to show up on a drum chart two decades later. That's a better resume than most dynamics of the era can claim.
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