Microtech Gefell
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Originally founded by Georg Neumann, Microtech Gefell was originally known as Georg Neumann & Company Gefell, and is considered by many in the audio recording industry to be the true bearer of the well-known Neumann name.
Gefell is the name of the city to which Georg Neumann fled from Berlin in 1943. An incendiary bomb had destroyed most of his original factory earlier in that same year. He brought his family, his technical director—Mr. Kuehnast—and around twenty employees with him, and soon set up shop in an abandoned textile factory. It was in the Gefell factory that Neumann constructed his first microphone and developed the famous M7 capsule, used in the U47 and M49. By 1948, Neumann had moved back to his home in Berlin, which was finally relinquished by the military, and started up a new company called Georg Neumann GmbH. When the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961, Neumann's Berlin and Gefell workshops were separated. However, Neumann and his engineers in Berlin were able to stay in communication with the laboratory in Gefell until 1976, when Georg Neumann died.
In 1972, the company changed its name to VEB Mikrofontechnik Gefell. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, an engineer from the workshop in Berlin visited the company and retrieved the microphones developed since the last communication between the two cities. The engineers in Berlin were surprised to find that the technology developed in Gefell was more advanced than that of Berlin. In 1991, Sennheiser purchased Neumann's Berlin company. This is the reason most often cited for the claim that Microtech Gefell is more accurately described as Neumann's company. Other reasons include the fact that the technology used in many of Neumann Berlin's best known microphones was developed in Gefell. The nickel membranes used in the highly coveted M-50, as well as the KM-54 and KM-64, was developed in Gefell. Microtech Gefell is still the only company that manufactures the original M7 capsule whose diaphragms are constructed on a PVC backing rather than Mylar. Microtech Gefell's microphones are manufactured using the same techniques developed by Georg Neumann, while Sennheiser's Neumann microphones are now manufactured with Sennheiser equipment. As a January 2004 Sound on Sound article stated: "Currently under the technical supervision of Kuehnast's son, Microtech Gefell still produces the M7 capsule in exactly the same way Georg Neumann taught the elder Kuehnast in the 1940s — hand drilling each hole in the backplate, making the PVC membrane, and gluing it all together by hand just as Neumann specified!"[1]
[edit] Sources
Cucoo, Jeremy; "Microtech-Gefell M296"; Recording.org; http://recording.org/reviews-24.html
Bashour, Dr. Fred; "Microtech Gefell M 930 Microphone"; ProAudioReview.com; http://www.proaudioreview.com/may03/microtech_gefell.shtml
"The History of Microtech Gefell"; Mercenary Audio; http://www.mercenary.com/hiofmige.html
"Microtech Gefell - An Amazing Chronical"; Microtech Gefell; http://www.gefell-mics.com/gefell_history_1.htm
Robjohns, Hugh; "Microtech Gefell M930"; Sound on Sound January 2004; http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan04/articles/microtechgefell.htm?print=yes
[edit] References
- ^ Robjohns, Hugh; "Microtech Gefell M930"; Sound on Sound January 2004; http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan04/articles/microtechgefell.htm?print=yes
