We checked out the brand new Lewitt Pure Tube microphone in the studio. Showing off its tube on the front, it's an attainable mic that looks hella cool.
The brand new Lewitt Pure Tube isn’t really based on any particular vintage mic, which is kinda exciting because nearly every new mic tries to centre itself on being a modernised, perfect replica of a well established older microphone, perhaps with a few modern updates. They’re so proud of the tube they’ve put it in a little window on the front and slightly backlit it to bring those vibes to the studio.
Lewitt is a mic company out of Vienna, Austria started by Roman Perschon in 2010. Perschon previously worked at AKG, the Austrian mic company I’m sure you’re very familiar with. He felt that innovations were being lost within such a big company, so he teamed up with Chinese entrepreneur Ken Yang to start a brand new company focusing on completely fresh, leading edge mic designs.
It's a fixed-cardioid pattern large diaphragm tube powered condenser microphone; a 1 inch gold-sputtered mylar capsule with a transformer based filter, powered by a hand selected 12au7 tube, with the circuit sans semi conductors or even capacitors. They’ve sealed this thing up and used some real annoying screws so I can’t get in there to see unfortunately.
The self noise on this mic is so low the company calls it a ‘tube mic with a FET performance’. So thanks to modern innovation we get the purported ‘roundness’ of tube amplification minus the noise that tubes can often bring.
Lewitt strive to make a quality tube mic at a decent price point, so - according to their literature - rather than have humans calibrating the mics to perfection, they leave that role for the machines to take care of, cutting costs and increasing accuracy.
Lewitt have focussed this as a vocal mic, but that shouldn't stop you from trying it as a single overhead on drums, or electric guitar amps. We tested it out on all three sound sources - vocals, drums and electric guitar.
On a drum overhead, it’s decent - you can definitely hear where it starts to roll off around 200 Hz, and on electric guitar it's great too, but I feel like vocals is where this thing truly shines. We were honestly surprised with the detail and definition, whilst still having a smooth top end where we didn’t need to reach for a de-esser.
It’s a well built piece and with its solid state separate power supply and easily attainable tube, so we can see this thing lasting for ages. Furthermore it comes with a 10 year warranty, so the company seem pretty damn sure this mic is gonna last in the rugged, or not so rugged, studio environment.
The Lewitt Pure Tube mic retails at around $1200 AUD for the essential set and there's a studio set with a pop filter and a waterproof case for a few more dollars., and you can find out where to pick one up at Elfa.com.au.
Find out more about the Lewitt Pure Tube Microphone over at Lewitt-audio.com
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