Sennheiser MKH 30
The figure-of-eight half of a mid-side pair. It's a symmetrical pressure-gradient condenser with a switchable pad and a bass roll-off, and it has a reputation for holding its directionality across the band.
Overview
The MKH 30 P 48 is a pressure-gradient microphone with bilateral directivity, a figure-of-eight in plain terms. Sennheiser's own literature is specific about the design goal. The symmetrical transducer is built to reduce how much the directional characteristic drifts with received frequency. That matters in a figure-of-eight, because a mic that only behaves like one in the middle of the band and turns into something else at the extremes is a hard thing to build a mid-side rig around. Sennheiser's copy in the British studio press made the same case in plainer language. It described the MKH 30 as a pressure-gradient mic with figure-of-eight directivity and pitched it as one half of an MS pair, a combination the company called both versatile and effective, with the rider that when MS stereo isn't required, each mic can be used independently (Studio-Sound, March 1993, p.22). That's advertising, and should be read as advertising. But it matches the way the mic actually gets used.
The published specs are modest on their face and sensible in practice. Frequency response runs 40 to 20,000 Hz, impedance is 150 ohms, and maximum output is 2.5 V. The flexibility is on the mic itself: a defeatable 10 dB preattenuation to prevent overmodulation, and a switchable bass attenuation to compensate for close miking. Anyone who has put a figure-of-eight on a loud source and watched a console input stage complain will see why the pad is there. The bass switch is there because the proximity effect on a figure-of-eight is not subtle, and a roll-off is the difference between a usable track and a muddy one.
The MKH 30 sits inside Sennheiser's RF-principle MKH condenser family, and the family history is documented. Studio-Sound (April 1993, p.22) records that Sennheiser introduced the current MKH condenser series in 1985, starting with the MKH 40 cardioid. The range was introduced to meet the requirements of digital recording, with improved distortion and self-noise figures plus higher SPL handling. The same piece notes that new models were added at periodic intervals, and that the six-mic series ran from the omni MKH 20 and the figure-of-eight MKH 30 up toward the multipattern MKH 80. That makes the MKH 30 a foundational member of the range rather than a later addition, the bidirectional counterpart to the MKH 20 omni.
The field-recording literature shows what the MKH 30 is for. Electronic Musician ran a piece in which a recordist describes using an MKH 30 and an MKH 40 in a mid-side configuration to capture crickets, wind in trees, and general rural ambience. The recordist reports being struck by the level of detail the combination delivered, and attributes it to the exceptionally low noise floors of the mics working with a clean preamp to produce a subtle signal with no audible hiss. Nature recordists and sound designers are hard on self-noise, because the quietest sources are exactly where a noisy mic shows itself.
The durability stories are the ones that stick. EQ ran a short item on Bernie Krause, a field recordist with more than 35 years in the work. His three mid-side pairs of MKH 30 and MKH 40 microphones had been subjected to temperature extremes from 50 below zero to 120 degrees, bone-dry desert climates, and the extreme humidity of the rain forest. One of them, in the telling, was engulfed by a black bear in Sequoia National Park. The anecdote is good copy, but the useful part is the range of conditions. Collectors and working recordists tend to treat the MKH series as buy-it-for-life gear.
A period review of the family documents the construction. Studio-Sound (June 1987, p.74) describes the mics as similar in construction, with the body formed from a lightweight steel tube flattened on two sides and transformerless outputs eliminating any transformers in the signal path. It found performance in complete agreement with the manufacturer's data. The same review notes the microphone was unusually tolerant of handling noise and quite good on wind noise and popping. That's useful for a mic that often ends up on a boom or a stand in less-than-ideal conditions, and a figure-of-eight is more exposed to the room than a cardioid.
What the available documentation does not establish is the original list price, confirmed production start and end years, or any catalogued common failure modes. Collectors report that used examples circulate, but no reliable current market pricing or parts-availability information is present in the source material, and none should be assumed. The safest way to think about the MKH 30 is as the pattern-completing member of a working family — the mic you reach for when the job needs a figure-of-eight that behaves like a figure-of-eight, stays quiet, and can be switched into a mid-side pair with its cardioid and omni siblings without fuss.
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