Audio-Technica AT-801
Audio-Technica's first microphone was an omnidirectional electret condenser that sold for fifty dollars (sixty, per DB Magazine) and ran on a single AA cell.
Overview
Audio-Technica spent its first fifteen years building phono cartridges, headphones, and record-care accessories before it tried microphones. The AT-801 was part of that opening salvo. According to Modern Recording (October 1977, p.33), the new line arrived in three electret-condenser and two dynamic moving-coil types, each available in cardioid or omnidirectional patterns. The AT-801 was the omni electret condenser - the simplest and cheapest of the condensers, listing at $50.
Fifty dollars in the late Seventies bought a small-diaphragm condenser in an aluminum alloy body. Frequency response ran 40-18,000 Hz, sensitivity was rated at −48 dB, and the output was balanced at 600 ohms nominal. Weight came in at 5.6 oz. less cable and clamp. DB Magazine (August 1978, p.43) listed the AT-801 in its model roundup as an omni running on a single AA (UM3) cell. That battery is the detail that separates this generation of electret from the phantom-powered condensers that followed.
The AT-801's permanently polarized diaphragm needs no external polarizing voltage, so the battery only feeds the impedance-matching network inside the mic. Audio-Technica's own literature claimed an alkaline cell would last roughly 3,500 hours in intermittent service. Taken at face value, that means most of these mics spent their working lives on the same battery. The tradeoff is that you have to remember the cell is in there, and an AT-801 that's been sitting in a case since 1985 will almost certainly need fresh batteries before it makes a sound.
The cardioid AT-811 and the top-of-line AT-813 were built to reject the room. The AT-801 picks up everything in front of it and a good deal to the sides and rear. That makes it a natural for ensemble capture, room ambience, and any job where you want the space as much as the source. That isn't a flaw. It's an omni doing what an omni does.
Audio-Technica's advertising for the AT-801 and AT-811 leaned hard on the smoothness of the response curves. The pitch was that you'd spend your EQ touching up the sound rather than correcting the microphone's built-in errors. The same ad called the pair "well under $100" bargains and urged engineers to make them a mainstay. That's the pitch you'd expect from a company's first microphones, trying to earn a place in a studio that already had its favorites.
Fifty dollars was aggressive. The AT-801 undercut most of the small condensers a project studio might have considered in 1977, and it offered balanced 600-ohm output rather than the unbalanced consumer connections that plagued cheap condensers of the era. The catch is that, as a first-generation product from a company entering a new category, the AT-801 carries none of the cachet of the established microphone names.
Anyone buying one today should test it before trusting it. The electret element itself is generally sturdy, but the battery compartment and the impedance-matching circuit are the weak points on any mic this old, and a unit stored with a dead cell inside may have corrosion to deal with. The aluminum alloy body holds up well, and the balanced output means it will interface with modern preamps without drama. The omni pattern limits its usefulness.
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