Electro-Voice RE11 (c. 1969–1975)
The RE16's lower-cost twin - same Continuously Variable-D capsule concept, same blast filter, roughly half the money.
Overview
Electro-Voice's own advertising from the period says plainly what the RE11 is: the lower-cost twin to the RE16. Both are dynamic cardioids built around E-V's Continuously Variable-D construction, the design covered by U.S. Patent No. 3,116,207, and both add an external pop filter. The RE16 was pitched at ultra-close miking. The RE11 was the same idea for buyers who couldn't justify the flagship price. In an E-V ad campaign that ran across Audio, DB-Magazine, and Recording-Engineer through the early 1970s, the company grouped the RE11 with the RE10, RE15, and RE16 as four cardioids sharing one advantage: response that doesn't shift with distance or angle. Only the level changes, the copy claims, so once you've dialed in equalization it stays put between rehearsal and performance. That's manufacturer language, not a lab measurement.
The ads also lay out the family hierarchy. The RE15 was the original, the microphone E-V credits with kicking off its "new era" of professional sound. The RE16 is the RE15 with a blast filter for close work. The RE10 is the economy version of the RE15. The RE11 sits as the RE16's budget sibling: same blast filter, same basic concept, less rigid requirements. If you needed a cardioid for stage or studio and the RE16's price felt steep, the RE11 was the one E-V wanted you to buy.
The published spec sheet is thin in the surviving documentation, but the design story is consistent across sources. The RE11 uses a super-cardioid polar pattern, not a plain cardioid, with maximum rejection at 150° off axis. E-V's copy says that when the mic is tilted in its most natural position, roughly 30° from horizontal, that rejection lands in the horizontal plane, which helps control stage bleed and room noise. There's also an integral bass-tilt circuit that cuts rumble below 100 Hz, a feature E-V specifically recommends for boom use and other long-reach situations. Like the rest of the family, the RE11 carries a "hum buck" coil that the company claims supplies an extra 25 dB of hum rejection, handy in rooms full of lighting dimmers and transformer buzz.
The price moved. By DB-Magazine (August 1972, p.68), the RE11 had climbed to $177.50, with the RE15 at $283.00 and the RE16 at $294.50. Then in Recording-Engineer (October 1974, p.12), the RE11 shows at $120.00, with the RE15 at $180.00 and the RE16 at $190.20. That's a drop, and the copy notes those are suggested professional net prices, slightly higher in Western States. The RE11 started around $96, peaked near $177 in the early '70s, and settled around $120 by the mid-'70s. Any single price is a snapshot of its ad, not a fixed MSRP.
The RE11 has no rich independent review record, based on what's documented. The surviving coverage is almost entirely E-V's own advertising, including the "Freedom of choice!" campaign that ran in Audio (January 1970, p.88) and elsewhere. No lab measurements, no service manual, no detailed production-run documentation have surfaced in the archive. The years above are an estimate drawn from the documented advertising window, not a confirmed production span. Expect the usual caveats for a fifty-year-old dynamic: the blast filter foam has almost certainly degraded, and the stand adapter is often missing. Dynamic microphones of this era are about as repairable as audio gear gets - no phantom power, no active electronics, just a diaphragm, a magnet, and a transformer. If the capsule is intact, the rest is usually fixable.
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