Electro-Voice Model 642 Cardiline (1960)
A long-range shotgun that won the motion picture industry's first microphone Oscar - and rewrote what broadcast engineers thought a directional mic could reach. Audio (June 1960, p.7) advertised the Model 642 at a list price of $390.00.
Overview
The Model 642 is a shotgun microphone, and not a subtle one. It has eighteen inches of tube, a dynamic element with a 1¼-inch diaphragm and a ¾-inch voice coil, and Electro-Voice's patented Cardiline principle behind it. That is the same line-and-port structure that, scaled up to seven feet, produced the enormous Model 643 laboratory instrument. The 642 is the practical version: short enough to hang on a boom, directional enough to pull a voice out of a room that would defeat an ordinary cardioid. *Audio* (June 1960, p.7) ran Electro-Voice's own advertising copy for the 642. The copy claimed the microphone could reach two to six times the distance of cardioid types, with ambient noise and reverberation pickup cut to roughly one third, and little or no loss of presence at those distances. That is marketing, not measurement.
The 642 also got recognition. According to a period account, the Model 642 Cardiline long-range pickup received the Motion Picture Industry's Academy Award in 1963 - the first such award for microphone design in twenty-two years. *Audio* (June 1963, p.60) carried the announcement under the headline "The Electro-Voice Model 642 Cardiline Microphone Earns The First Award For Microphone Design." Mind the dates. The microphone was already on the market and being advertised three years before the award, so the Oscar came late in its run, not at launch.
The Cardiline patent is No. 3095084. The tube carries openings along its length that combine with the dynamic element's rear porting to produce extreme directivity. The design also offers three positions for adjusting the low-end response: flat, minus 5 dB, and minus 10 dB at 100 Hz, so the user can dial back proximity bass depending on working distance. A support hanger and an Acoustifoam windscreen came with it. A long interference tube is a wind magnet, and the foam is not optional outdoors.
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