MICROPHONE OF THE MONTH MAY 2019

On May 1, I would like to put a mic from Socialist history in the spotlight: The Tesla AMD 410 N, a professional unidirectional dynamic microphone from the Seventies and Eighties.

The mic was meant for reproduction of voices and instruments, on stage and in the studio. The plastic cylinder (photo2) enhances the directional pattern further. It came standard with the mic, and together with a cable, was sold as the Tesla AMD 460 set. For reasons unknown the ouput connector is a 5-pin DIN 41524 connector: a 3-pin would have been sufficient.

It was a decent product, appreciated by Czech and Slovakian musicians, but hardly used outside it’s country of origin, Czecho Slovakia.

The Tesla factory, originally named Elektra, had been founded in Prague, in the 1920's. In 1932, it was bought by the Dutch Philips company, which had it produce mostly electric lightbulbs and tubes.

After WW 2 the factory was nationalized and renamed Tesla, after Nikola Tesla, the famous Serbian inventor, from the 19th Century, who emigrated to the US. There he worked for Edison, but later became his main competitor.

Tesla's system for elctrical power with alternating current eventually won against Edison’s system of direct current.
At later age he claimed to have made some very weird inventions, and claimed he had devised a ‘weapon to end all wars’. Tesla became the role model for ‘the Mad Scientist’ in the US.

The Czech factory was the sole producer of microphones during the time the country was part of the Communist Eastern Block, The range went from professional products for Studio’s, Television and P.A., to semi-pro and home applications, for reel-to-reel tape, and cassette-recorders. The designs were often totally unique. Tesla also produced radio's and radar equipment, their passive radar KRTP 86 Tamara (from 1986) was claimed to be the only type able to detect military "invisible aircraft"; Nikola Tesla himself could have said it.

This is one of the types that feature in my book Witnesses of Words. More information about that can be found at www.witnessesofwords.com