Electro-Voice Model 420 Desk Stand
A twenty-dollar chunk of cast metal that outlasted the microphones it was built to hold.
Overview
The Model 420 isn't a microphone. It's the desk stand Electro-Voice sold to hold one. For a list price of $20, buyers got a heavy cast base finished in matching TV gray, topped with a clamp that gripped the microphone body rather than threading onto it. The mic slides out of the cradle for handheld or boom use and drops back in for fixed-position work, with no screwing and unscrewing between setups. In a broadcast or quiz-show setting, the same mic gets yanked from a stand, pressed into an emcee's hand and then returned. That convenience is worth real money there.
The stand shows up throughout Electro-Voice's early- and mid-1960s advertising as the accessory for the company's directional dynamics. In Audio (March 1965, p.68), E-V showed its Model 676 cardioid on the Model 420, priced at $20.00 list. The same pairing ran in HiFi-Stereo (March 1965, p.138) and again in Tape Recording (May 1965, p.58). The stand was a supporting player in those ads, but a deliberate one. E-V listed it alongside the boom shock mount and the stand coupler as part of a small set of mounting hardware, each piece with its own line item and its own trade discount.
Mechanically, the Model 420 is modest: a cast base with a clamp. The fact sheet behind this page is thin, and the period advertising that mentions the stand does so only in passing. Treat any claim about its exact dimensions, weight, or finish beyond "TV gray" with caution. What's documented is the price, the material description as it appeared in E-V's own copy, and its role as the desk mount for the 676 and related microphones.
The clamp is the part to inspect on a survivor. A cast base is hard to kill, but a sprung or padded clamp that's been squeezed for sixty years may no longer hold a mic securely. Expect the TV gray finish to show its age, and don't expect the stand to arrive with the microphone it was photographed with.
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