Audio-Technica AT-813
An $80-$95 electret condenser that Audio-Technica's own advertising dared you to compare against thousand-dollar studio mics. The spec sheet backs up more of that claim than you'd expect.
Overview
The AT-813 was one of the first microphones Audio-Technica ever built. By then the company was already known for phono cartridges and headphones, but microphones were new territory. Modern Recording (October 1977, p.33) reported the launch as an expansion of the product line, noting that A-T had up to that point stuck to cartridges, headphones, and record-care accessories. The first wave was three electret condensers and two dynamics, each available in cardioid and omnidirectional versions. The AT-813 sat at the top of the electret group.
What sets it apart from its siblings is the pickup pattern and the windscreen. The AT-813 is a unidirectional electret condenser, cardioid in the usual terms, with a large, permanent, built-in protective screen. The screen uses multistage filters to knock down wind noise and the pops that come from close-up vocal work. That integral screen is the defining physical feature of the model. The AT-811 cardioid shares the pattern but not the screen, and the AT-801 omni shares neither. All three use aluminum alloy bodies and permanently polarized diaphragms, so no external phantom power is required. A single AA cell inside the microphone powers the impedance-matching network. An alkaline cell is rated for approximately 3,500 hours of intermittent service, which means most owners replace the battery out of guilt rather than necessity.
The numbers are respectable for the era and the price. Frequency response measures 20–20,000 Hz, the widest of the three electret models and 30 Hz broader at the bottom than the AT-811's 50–20,000 Hz rating. Sensitivity is rated at −58 dB, the lowest of the trio — which is simply the cost of the cardioid pattern and the extra filtering in front of the diaphragm. Output is balanced at 600 ohms nominal, which the company's own advertising pointed out will match pro and semi-pro mixers alike. Weight is 6 oz. less cable and clamp. The output connector is a professional A3M Switchcraft type, a detail that mattered to working engineers in 1977 and still matters to anyone patching one into a modern interface today.
Audio-Technica's advertising for the AT-813 leaned hard on value, so the marketing needs separating from the substance. The company's own copy billed it as delivering performance comparable to microphones costing around ten times as much. It cited a recording engineering class at a major university that ran simultaneous multi-track comparisons between the AT-813 and far more expensive competition. The students, according to the ad, often couldn't hear a meaningful difference, and some preferred the A-T. That's advertising, not independent testing. The same source documents the AT-801 at $60, while other manufacturer documents list it at $50, and the AT-803S lapel mic at $80, which places the AT-813 firmly at the top of the introductory range.
Pricing drifted over the model's life. In dealer sale listings, the AT-813 was advertised at a regular price of $190.00 and discounted to $85.00, so list price and street price were very different things in the late '70s. The AT-814 appears alongside it in those same listings, suggesting the family expanded beyond the original five microphones fairly quickly.
For a first-generation product from a company with no microphone history, the AT-813 is a surprisingly complete piece of engineering. It has a 20 Hz bottom end, a balanced 600-ohm output, a Switchcraft connector, battery-powered impedance matching and multistage pop filtering. The company had spent 15 years building small transducers before it scaled up to microphone-sized ones.
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