IRPA/Oktava MD-68

Super rare soviet omni dynamic, especially with its impossible to find original shock mount and windscreen. I’ve seen only a half dozen of these mics online or in person, three of them belong(ed) to our studio, and only two of them had their
original shock mount and oversized windscreen (which is critical to the mic’s sound). One of those is this the one for sale here, the other is in our mic closet. I always wanted to keep the pair (they sound identical) but the truth is we have too many mics and this one takes up so much space - it's huge.

The MD68 is a really well-balanced dynamic that sounds great on vocals, guitar amps, bass amps, and just about anywhere I've tried it. It sounds different with the windscreen on and off, as you'd expect.

I haven't been able to figure out what it's intended use was when it was designed, since there's kind of a lot of conflicting evidence going on. The MD68's extremely limited production numbers (only a hundred or so were made in the span of a few years) imply that it was designed for a very specific use. The shockmount system indicates the need to minimize handling noise from a stand or boom, indicating that it was potentially designed to be a boom mic. The windscreen indicates it would be an outdoor boom mic, but the omnidirectional polar pattern doesn't fit into this narrative, because an outdoor boom mic would require extra directionality, not less. My other thought is that it was designed to be an outdoor recording mic, and this is probably what it's intended use was. It's flat frequency response, and extremely limited production indicate it was designed for a specific use, and possibly for a specific event... like the 1980 Olympics hosted in Moscow. IRPA designed and manufactured several proprietary pieces of equipment specifically for the Olympics, so it's perfectly reasonable to assume that these mics were designed to capture the audience and ambient sound at the events.