This is one of the finest examples of a Lenkinap KMD (LOMO 19a9) I've ever come across, and comes with its original suitcase, original microphone case, cabling and connectors, rubber shock mount stand adapter, custom US thread adapter, and spare parts.
This KMD is from 1960, its second year of production, and features a very rare (and in my opinion, the coolest) 19a9 grill design with double bars, large square mesh, and large hole grill-pattern along the top of the grills.
The mic is in excellent working order. The capsule and diaphragm are 100% original and sound perfect - a true rarity these days. The capsule mount, originally made from bakelite that's become brittle over the decades, has been replaced with a sturdy nylon mount that we designed ourselves. The 20B35 PSU, which contains the huge coupling cap and toroidal output transformer which are integral to the true sound of this microphone, has been updated by replacing the failing diodes with new ones, and then fully tested and calibrated by Greg Norman of Electrical Audio to provide accurate voltages and reliability for many decades to come.
Cosmetically, the mic is in better condition than it seems. The body was dead-mint until very recently, when I tried sliding it into a shock-mount prototype we're working on. The prototype was a little to small, and scraped some of the paint off the mic when we tried to pull it back out, which explains those long scratches which reveal the beautiful brass finish below (see how I turned that around?). Despite that, the mic is in perfect condition inside and out, comes with a spare tested and hand-selected NOS 6J1P tube.
This is a chance to get a truly perfect working example of one of the most sought after vintage tube mics from Russia or the world - famously used to record David Grohl's drums on "In Utero" There's no one that's more particular about these mics than me, and I guarantee that this one is the cream of the crop.
Technically, this mic not a LOMO because the LOMO factory wasn't established until late-1963, which is why the mic says "Lenkinap" instead of LOMO. Lenkinap was the Soviet department responsible for developing and manufacturing the finest audio tools for Soviet Cinema. The pre-1963 19a9s are called KMD, which stands for “(K)Condenser Microphone by Dubrov", named after the engineer that designed it. He also designed the 19a14 (KMD-2) and the 82a9 dynamic microphone set (KMD-3).
