A few months ago I stumbled across a youtube clip that walked through the process of putting together a home made clone of a U87. These mic clones might be old news for most of you, but I had no idea such a thing was possible before I saw that video. I've always lusted after the high end Nuemann mics but I could never justify the cost. So the prospect of building my own for about $500 in parts was too good to pass up. I ordered parts and dove in. 

I've never done any kind of electronics project like this before. I've done basic soldering but I'd never soldered anything onto a printed circuit board before. I probably spent about four or five evenings working on this over the course of a month and a half. Once all the pieces were in place, I put phantom power to it, took measurements from the proper points and calibrated the FET per instructions. Then I put it on a stand started recording. 

So far, I've done some AB tests of my speaking voice with an old CAD E200 and an even older AKG C414. Right now I'm using it to put down some resonator guitar parts. It sounds great. 

I'm probably going to build a second copy for a buddy. After that, I'm thinking about some kind of U47 clone. Anyone else using mics you've built yourself?


 

 
 

Looks like a nice build!  Any way you can give us some samples?  Oh and information about where you got it?
 
Thanks!

That's awesome man! I didn't know about this either. Did you buy a kit, or did you have to purchase everything separately? Where did you buy from? Thanks for posting this.

Leadfoot
That's awesome man! I didn't know about this either. Did you buy a kit, or did you have to purchase everything separately? Where did you buy from? Thanks for posting this.

This site has complete kits available. They don't look bad. Everything you need in one box for a decent price. 
https://microphone-parts.com/
I ordered my capsule for the above link but I didn't go with their complete kit. Instead I opted to do my build based on the links and info I found at this site: 
http://www.diyrecordingequipment.com/blogs/news/15851880-building-a-vintage-style-u87-mic-is-easier-and-cheaper-than-you-think-video
 
Part of the reason I went that route was because I wanted to use a body from this site:
http://www.studio939.bigcartel.com/
 
And circuit boards from here:
http://www.vintagemicrophonepcbkit.com/index.html
 
But I also went with buying my own parts because the circuit boards are based on a vintage U87 design. And those vintage U87's make use of polystyrene capacitors that difficult to find these days. You can build them with modern capacitors and they'll work fine, but I wanted to use as many vintage parts as I could so I got most of the PCB components using the pre-loaded mouser cart link in the DIY recording equipment thread. And then I got the polystyrene caps from www.justradios.com

I haven't done too much recording with it. But I do have this. Just a very quick and dirty (and sloppy) recording of some acoustic open chords and then a some single notes on a resonator acoustic. 
https://soundcloud.com/juliet-hotel/u87-acoustic-guitar-test-1/s-x1BLs
 
 

Late in the track there is a little blip of noise as the guitars fade out. What caused that?

I think that's me hitting the spacebar to stop the recording of the second track.

Thanks. I want to do this too. I have often thought of building these...

https://www.seventhcircleaudio.com

But I have held back so far. The lack of meter on the compressors has given me pause.

I don't know anything about them but this company in the UK has kits to build 1176 clones with meters in an API rack format.
http://www.soundskulptor.com/uk/cp5176.html
 
I don't have much use for hardware compressors these days. But there will definitely more mic builds in my future.

Great info. Thank you!