I have been fortunate to be the steward of a Calrec CM4050 microphone and related accessories for the last 18 months or so. Sadly I have not been able to do much with it, partly due to a lack of adequate time and partly due to a slight mistrust of the mains power supply. I am about to return it to its rightful owner.

From its appearance and low serial number (502), I suspect that it is a prototype particularly as the pre-amp is covered in handwritten notes on masking tape and the connectors are RCA phonos and TS 6.35mm jacks. The connector on the base of the microphone is a 6-pin male XLR. The connecting lead is a 6-pin XLR-F to four TS 6.35mm jacks and is about 1m80 long. This lead is connected to a pre-amp with coarse and fine gain switches and then to what would appear to be an A-format to B-format converter, the outputs of which appear on 2 sets of 4 RCA phono sockets marked NOPQ. I have not had the courage to open the cases to investigate their contents. The mic-preamp is mains powered and I suspect provides the polarisation voltage for the capsules. The A/B converter appears to be passive.

Also included was a Calrec Surround 1215-02 module which is dated 30/06/81 and marked with the engineer's initials, RL. On the front panel is a dual concentric switch/potentiometer and a 2nd pot. The switch selects mono, stereo, Quadruple, Ambisonic and B (-Format) [my parentheses]. The concentric potentiometer would appear to vary infinitely the output configuration from wide width/shallow depth through square to narrow width/deep depth. The second potentiometer controls the output level.

I have taken some digital pictures and would happily post them if someone could let me know how to do this. If anyone can provide any details or history of this highly original microphone, I am sure the owner would be delighted.

Season's greetings to all

Tim Boissaud-Cooke
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