It’s full speed ahead at the iconic microphone manufacturer Neumann these days. While it continues to confound many with its unwillingness to resurrect some of the most famous microphone designs in history (the U47, U49, U67 et al), Neumann continue to release new and great sounding mics on a regular basis.
The company has broadened its price range considerably in recent years to make it a more inclusive brand. Curiously it’s now also in the process of bringing its first speaker designs to market – its parent company Sennheiser has recently purchased Klein & Hummel.
In the meantime, to keep things moving along, Neumann has further fleshed out its TLM range of transformerless condenser microphones with the release of the diminutive TLM 102.
POCKET ROCKET
The TLM 102 is a fixed cardioid design featuring a ‘large diaphragm’ capsule wrapped in classic silver and red-striped livery – it can also be ordered in black if that’s your preference. While this all seems fairly unremarkable, the big talking points with this new mic are its size and price. In a nutshell the TLM 102 is small. In fact, by traditional Neumann standards it’s only just bigger than a nutshell itself! The somewhat lacklustre manual does not specify the size of the capsule apart from stating that it’s a ‘large diaphragm’ but I suspect it’s somewhat less than the full one-inch diameter of most of its brethren.Mind you, it still looks like a Neumann, with its sturdy silver double mesh grille and general air of bulletproof Germanic design and manufacture. The fact that it can rest snugly in your open hand just makes it look a bit like it got shrunk in the wash. I’m pretty sure this is the smallest Neumann front-address condenser microphone ever made and certainly the cheapest. The TLM 102 weighs a mere 260g and is 52mm in diameter by 116mm long; not perhaps the mic with which to impress your clients, but on the plus side it still has that Neumann look to it and is a helluva lot quicker to adjust and secure than its vintage forebears with the supplied no-frills ring-lock mount.
The published frequency response graph shows a gentle roll-off below 70Hz and a slight dip at 6kHz before a marked rise of 4dB between 8kHz and 12kHz, ending in a decisive dive above 17kHz. Apart from these high frequency variations, the response appears ruler flat on the plot, and this is borne out in use. With a signal-to-noise ratio of 82dB (A-weighted) and a maximum SPL of 144dB, the TLM 102 is ready to handle very quiet or loud sounds with a minimum of fuss and because of its modest stature it’s most certainly a candidate for getting into those tricky (and sometimes very loud) corners where larger condensers have to be abandoned. I’ve used some amazing little condensers in the past (particularly the Milabs) so I wasn’t going to write this little fella off straight away just on its looks. The Neumann TLM range does sometimes divide opinion, and though the odd engineer turns their nose up in favour of vintage models, I’ve had good experiences using the earlier TLM 103 on various occasions and was keen to see whether the 102 could manage the same trick of being a good all-rounder at an even more affordable price.
The fact that it can rest snugly in your open hand just makes it look a bit like it got shrunk in the wash
FROM LITTLE THINGS…
‘The Tike’, as I had started thinking of the little Neumann, got thrown in the deep end straight off the bat during some longish tracking sessions immediately after it arrived. I liked it on acoustic guitar with its clean but not overly bright articulation of fingered and picked strings. It didn’t perhaps capture the ‘wood’ of my battered Tama the way some more expensive mics do, but the tone was very useable and well balanced. Percussion sounded tasty, the mic producing a nice clarity and energy on shakers, tambourines and triangle. I quickly found that backing it off a whisker allowed the room to come into play in a restrained but useful way too. I wasn’t sure about how it sounded on guitar amps – not quite as gutsy as I like to hear them – but this was one of the rare times I opted for something different. In fact, it was a testament to the TLM 102 that it remained my main microphone choice for days on end, on everything from strings to dulcimers to junk metal. I really liked the 102 as a mid distance drum microphone placed about two to three metres out in front of the bass drum and a foot or two off the ground. I got a sweet image of the kit from this position and several times used just this and a couple of dynamics on snare and kick as my drum sound – nice and simple! Unfortunately, I didn’t have any other voices to try the TLM 102 out on and I had a heavy flu most of the time it was in my studio but I did do some very quiet, throaty vocals that came out nicely. I was amazed by the breadth in the polar response when singing into this mic. I found I could sing literally three or four inches to one side of the mic rather than straight into it with very little change in tonality or volume.
A TIKE TO LIKE
I wish I’d had a few other singers through the studio to confirm its abilities as a vocal mic, but on the evidence of a couple of weeks of solid tracking I’m pretty confident the TLM 102 is indeed a capable studio all-rounder. Certainly on a large range of instruments it produced pleasing results and there were no irritating tonalities to be heard. It also passed the test of being a multiple overdub mic on a single composition where any deficiencies tend to be magnified as the tracks pile up. I found its diminutive size soon became irrelevant in practice and rarely felt the need to reach for an alternative mic, which is a very good sign in a sub $1000 microphone.
I’m not one of those who always equate Asian manufactured microphones with inferior quality, but I’m glad to see Neumann keeping true to its heritage and continuing to build even its cheapest models in the fatherland. The build quality and sound are indisputably pro so it will be no surprise to see smaller project studios and bedroom setups flashing the Neumann logo in the months and years to come. Don’t buy this mic thinking it’s going to sound just like a mini U47 because it certainly ain’t, but if you’re looking for a little trooper of a mic with good quality sound and no frills then the TLM 102 could be the one for you.
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