Sennheiser MKH-104 (c. 1963)
Surviving information on the Sennheiser MKH-104 is thin, and most of it comes from Audio magazine in 1963-64. The MKH-104 was a condenser microphone with transistorized RF circuitry. Sennheiser's ad for it ran over several issues and made a very specific claim. The response curve shown was not a theoretical projection. It was individually plotted for a random-picked MKH 104, and it was virtually identical in shape and output level to a separately plotted, signed curve (Audio, September 1963, p.19; the ad appeared again in Audio, December 1963, p.17).
Not everyone accepted Sennheiser's figures. A November 1963 reader letter on the "Sennheiser Microphone Profile" argued that, with the spherical (omnidirectional) characteristic, the sensitivity should read about 0.9 mV/µbar rather than the published 1.55 mV/µbar (Audio, November 1963, p.8). The exchange continued into 1964. AKG's head of research and development, Bernhard Weingartner, wrote in as a "third party to a controversy" over a report on the Sennheiser RF condenser (Audio, April 1964, p.10).
No production span, original price, or complete specification sheet has yet been traced. This page is based entirely on the period record above.
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