Microphone Comparison Test - AKG C12VR - Neumann U67 - Neumann - M49V - UA Bock 251

Pat Wright
Jul 30
5 min read

From right to left: Bock 251, M49V, C12VR & U67

Inspirational Beginnings

Long & McQuade has always been known for stocking some of the finest musical gear for as long as I can remember. When I first began my recording journey many years ago, I would regularly visit Long & McQuade’s recording department—this would have been at the Corydon Ave location in Winnipeg. Three pieces of gear have stayed etched in my memory since then: the Neve 1073 channel strip, the AKG C12VR tube microphone, and the SSL 1U rack Stereo G Bus Compressor.

Come to think of it, I can’t say for certain that the 1073 was actually in stock, but I vividly remember standing there admiring the silver G Bus Comp with its square VU meter, knowing full well that my starving-artist income wouldn’t allow me to walk away with it. The other unforgettable item was the enigmatic green-and-gold gem—the AKG C12VR. It sat there in the showcase glistening like a Fabergé egg: rare and mysterious. At the time, I had no idea just how robust the body of the C12 really is. Its heavy, thick metal casing has a tank-like quality—one could probably bludgeon a Fabergé egg into oblivion with a C12VR (though that's a very different kind of test!).

A New Arrival

We recently received a C12VR into our shop stock. Jim placed this handsome unit in our high-end mic showcase, nestled alongside other remarkable tube mics like the Neumann U67, Neumann M49V, and Universal Audio Bock 251. Immediately, we saw an opportunity to conduct a much-deserved microphone comparison.

Comparisons… or Criticisms?

There are countless online and print publications that conduct mic comparisons—breaking down pros and cons, and trying to determine which mic is "best." But in truth, choosing a microphone to match a human voice is incredibly subjective. If you’ve ever seen The Beatles: Get Back documentary, you might’ve noticed they used Neumanns on nearly everything—except for those small condensers on John and Paul’s vocals, which I believe were AKG C30As. So, if you only had one mic, a U67 to record everything, in the end, the result would probably be A-Okay. Having said that, I do believe they were using combos of U87s and U67s for the Get Back documentary.

Anyway… for this blog post, we didn’t approach our mic tests with criticism in mind. Instead, we considered it more of a public service—or a Recording Service Announcement (RSA)—a term you may recognize from our LM Pro social media pages. The concept here is simple: if you’ve ever wondered what a C12VR, U67, M49V, or Bock 251 sound like—especially when compared side by side with the same source material—wonder no longer. This is what they sound like.

This comparison is meant to give you the chance to hear how these mics handle male and female speech, as well as singing. We chose not to do a technical shootout because our shop/showroom is open to the public and therefore subject to background noise. You may hear the occasional artifact, and for that, we apologize.

Also, we don’t have tools like a Spectrum Analyzer, Sweeping Signal Generator, or Anechoic Chamber in the showroom. So no critical frequency response or dynamic range testing—just real-world performance.

Getting Down to Business

For the speech samples, we sourced a short paragraph about studio compressors. For the singing section, we quickly wrote original lyrics and melodies. I wanted the male vocal to sound slightly aggressive, and the female vocal to be light and airy—this contrast should give listeners a good sense of how each mic responds to different vocal qualities and SPLs.

Perhaps in the future, we’ll test these same mics on other sources like drums or acoustic guitars.

Again, we appreciate your understanding about the occasional background noise—our showroom is filled with amazing gear like the RND 5088 console and ATC 150s, but it’s still subject to the sounds of phones, intercoms, and, most importantly, our valued customers!

The Gear

As you’ve probably gathered, we tested four tube microphones:

AKG C12VR
Neumann U67
Neumann M49V
Universal Audio Bock 251

All mics were run through a Daking Mic-Pre 4T, chosen specifically for its four identical channels to maintain consistency. The high-pass filter was set to around 36 Hz on each channel to reduce subsonic rumble. I could’ve gone with 60 or even 80 Hz, but I didn’t want to cut too much low-end—especially considering the intent of this test.

We also considered using our Manley Force 4-channel mic pre, but felt that running tube mics through a tube preamp might add too much coloration. As lovely as that result might be, it would distract from our goal: a natural and neutral comparison of these four excellent tube mics.

Conversion was handled by an Apollo X8p, set to line-in with gain at 0. Monitoring was done via our SSL Origin console, but the audio wasn’t printed through the board—it was captured directly from the Apollo into Pro Tools.

We made every effort to level-match the mics at the Daking preamp stage. In Pro Tools, we made slight clip gain adjustments to ensure that no recording appeared "louder" than another due to frequency bias. Adjustments were minimal and intended only to maintain a fair listening experience when skipping between clips.

No EQ or dynamics were applied on any track. The audio regions weren’t bounced—they were consolidated in the session and renamed. The WAVs used for the blog were pulled directly from the session’s Audio Files folder.

The Test Subjects

The male voice in the test belongs to author, yours truly—Pat Wright from LM Pro. The female voice is Shannon Chapman from our Keyboards department, who generously contributed her excellent singing and voice-over talents.

We both used pop filters and did our best to maintain consistent mic distance. As mentioned earlier, we read the same script. Shannon opted to sing the lyrics I’d written but created her own melody. Her delivery was so smooth and expressive that it made the lyrics feel deeper than I’d intended—proof of her talent.

The Comparison

Rather than me describing how each mic sounds, just give them a listen and come to your own conclusions. The only thing I’ll say is this: we each had our personal favourites for both singing and voice-over applications—and they weren’t always the same mic for both.

Pat Speaking

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