This is a gorgeous and incredibly rare shock-mountable Lenkinap KMD (LOMO 19a9), I've never come across another one like it. The mic has the rarer pre-LOMO 3-bar grill, original shockmount hooks, and an original LOMO shockmount with matching paint. The mic also comes with an original fully-serviced 20B35 PSU, custom made wooden 19a9 mic case, original cabling and connectors, rubber shock mount stand adapter, custom US thread adapter, and a tested and hand-picked NOS 6J1P tube.
The mic and PSU are in perfect working order. The capsule and diaphragm are 100% original and the mic sounds exactly as it should. You can see from the photos that some of the top layer of gold is rubbed off along the top left of the diaphragm. Someone must have attempted to clean it at some point in its life. The amount that has been rubbed off has a negligible effect on the output sensitivity of the mic, only about 1 dB. This is less than the output difference between different tubes, so thankfully the mic's sound is not affected. We used this mic as a part of a pair with another original 19a9 for almost 10 years and they sounded virtually identical, and I'm happy to provide comparisons to our other 19a9s if you'd like.
The capsule mount, originally made from bakelite that's become brittle over the decades and has a risk of snapping and damaging the diaphragm has been replaced with a sturdy nylon mount that we designed ourselves, and will hold up for many decades.
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, this mic is in truly excellent condition, and looks amazing in the shockmount. It can also be mounted using the mic mount to a standard mic stand with the provided thread adapter.
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).
