Electro-Voice RE16
A supercardioid dynamic built on E-V's Continuously Variable-D principle, with a pop filter bolted on to survive the singers who eat the grille.
Overview
The RE16 is the RE15 with an external pop filter. That's not collector shorthand. It's how Electro-Voice pitched the microphone. In its own advertising, the company described the RE16 as the same fine microphone as the RE15, fitted with an external "pop" filter to solve the problems of ultra-close miking. That's a real engineering decision, not a marketing one, and it explains why the RE16 turns up in broadcast and voice work as readily as it does onstage.
Under the pop filter is a dynamic element. No phantom power, no capsule to bias, nothing to fail when the house supply is questionable. Its published response runs 80-15,000 Hz with a supercardioid polar pattern. That top end is narrower than the 45-18,000 Hz E-V lists for the RE20, because the RE16 was never sold as a studio instrument mic. It was sold as a handheld. The supercardioid rejects more off-axis sound than an ordinary cardioid, with maximum rejection 150° off axis. That lets the RE16 sit on a stand or a boom in a loud room and keep the unwanted sound out.
The core of the design is Electro-Voice's Continuously Variable-D construction, covered under U.S. Patent No. 3,115,207. The company's claim for Variable-D was specific: response never varies with distance or angle, so performers can work close, back off, or move around to the rear of the mic and the tonal balance holds. Only the level changes. E-V's advertising put it plainly, arguing that once equalization is set it remains constant, and that tonal balance would not shift between the dress rehearsal and the final performance no matter what the talent did. That is manufacturer copy, not independent measurement. It is the reason the Variable-D family existed, and the RE16 inherits it.
E-V's later documentation describes the RE16, RE20 and RE27N/D Variable-D microphones as having been, for decades, the chosen industry standard for broadcast show hosts, vocal booths, voice-over studios, and professional touring or rental companies, trusted for acoustical performance and durability. That is the manufacturer's own summary of its product line's reputation, not a test result.
Physically, the RE16 is a steel-cased handheld finished in fawn beige, with a three-pin XLR connector and an open-circuit voltage of 1.4 mV/Pascal. That output is on the low side next to the RE27N/D's 2.5 mV/Pascal, so keep it in mind before plugging one into a preamp that was already working hard. The RE16 is passive, so there's no power requirement, and the integral wind and blast filters are part of the design rather than an accessory. E-V also fitted it with selectable filters - a -6 dB rolloff from 250 to 100 Hz, a -12 dB rolloff from 1,000 to 100 Hz, and a -3 dB high-frequency rolloff. That's a useful amount of tone shaping on the microphone itself instead of at the console.
Pricing shows where the RE16 sat in the range. Audio (April 1969, p.80) listed the new RE16 at $159.00 suggested net, with the RE15 at $153.00 and the economy RE10 at $90.00. When Audio ran the same advertisement again (January 1970, p.88), the RE16 was still at $159.00. Prices moved substantially after that. DB-Magazine (August 1972, p.68) and Recording-Engineer (October 1972, p.12) both carried the RE16 at $294.50 list, with the RE15 at $283.00 and the RE10 at $166.00. A Recording-Engineer notice (October 1974, p.12) shows the RE16 at $192.20 suggested professional net, with a note that prices ran slightly higher in the Western States. The RE16 was never the cheap option. It consistently sat just above the RE15 it was derived from, and the gap was the pop filter.
The RE16 belongs to a four-microphone campaign E-V ran for years around the RE15. The original RE15 came first. The RE16 was added as the same microphone with the external pop filter. The RE10 was the economy version of the RE15, sharing the concept and quality but built for less rigid requirements, and the RE11 was the lower-cost twin to the RE16. E-V advertised all four together, and the same advertisement reappears across Audio, DB-Magazine, and Recording-Engineer through the late 1960s and into the mid-1970s. Separately, DB-Magazine (January 1975, p.21) ran a campaign for the RE15 built around reliability, noting a "hum buck" coil supplying an extra 25 dB of hum rejection. That's a family feature, though the advertisement names the RE15 rather than the RE16.
The RE16 takes the standard E-V stand adapters shared across the handheld line. It appears alongside the 635A, RE200, N/D468, RE20, RE27N/D, N/D868, RE50-B, RE50N/D-B, BK-1, the N/Dym handhelds, and the PL Series in E-V's accessory listings. The mounting hardware is not model-specific.
The archive has no independent laboratory measurement of the RE16, no service manual, and no confirmed production window. The years of coverage above are drawn from advertising appearances, not from a documented start and end of manufacture. Expect the usual for a microphone of this vintage and construction: the steel case is the durable part, and the foam inside the pop filter and the windscreen material are the parts that age. Assume those need attention before the microphone sounds right again.
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