The Russian and Chinese Oktava MK012

The Background

I a fan of Oktava microphones. I own a few types including a pair of small cap MK012s, which I picked up from the German mail order supplier, Thomann, a couple of weeks ago.

I was browsing around the Russian Oktava website and noticed how different my MK012 appeared compared to mics in the photos. Actually I'd noticed this when they arrived, in so much as the 10dB pads were not included in the Thomann package and the clips were rubber Sennheiser copies rather than the metal ones shown on the site.

A few minutes with Google lead me to Matthew McGlynn's Debris.com blog and this disturbing story, suggesting that some Oktava mics might be Chinese made cheap copies. Matthew's story pointed me to non-linked how to spot a fake page at the Oktava site (actually its a relic of their pre-revamp site). I read it with a sinking feeling since the box of mics in the 2nd column is, down to every detail, the set I bought from Thomann.

After contacting Thomann, asking for their reaction to the allegations, to their credit, the company agreed to take the Chinese mics back. And on this assurance I ordered a matched stereo pair of Russian built Oktava mics from Oktava-Online web site. Subsequently Thomann has posted "made in China" or "made in Russia" under each Oktava item on their web site. Curiously the made in China label is placed under mics, such as the ML 52 which nobody is claiming to be anything other than Russian. (I'm confident that my ML52s are Russian since I opened one up and found pencil markings in Cyrillic inside).

The story has evolved over the past days you can read in Matt's reports here and here. The chinese mics originate with a company, Oktava Ltd owned by the former British distributor Fergus McKay. Oktava Ltd is in dispute with OAO Oktava (Russia) over alledged copyright abuse. Oktava Ltd claim the chinese mics are consistent in quality, long a problem with Russian production, whilst the two microphones are identical in sound. You can judge for yourself.

Since Mr McKay has a reputation for protecting his business interests with litigation, I'm not going to comment on the rights and wrongs of Okava Ltd and/or A&F McKay vs OAO Oktava, other than to say that Oktava Ltd's web site, with its Russian revolutionary kitsch theme and its photograph of the Russian made MK012s in its brochures is clearly trading on idea that these are Russian built microphones. Oktava (UK) Ltd may or may not own the trademark but they are being less than forthcoming about the origin of some of their products.

Since the Oktava-online set arrived faster than the return papers from Thomann, I couldn't resist running a set of side by side tests. So, the obvious question, does the alleged rip off look and sound like a rip off? Judge for yourself.

The Package

Well, first, the Russian Oktava mics arrived in a tiny package that looks like something you kept your pencils in when you were in primary school. Open it up and its really rather elegant how they pack two clips, two mics, two pads and 6 heads into such as small case. The chinese mics come in a hulking polythene box, with no documentation, certainly no mention of Oktava Ltd. The Russain mics come with individual frequency charts and documentation all printed in Russian on, oh rustical charm!, what looks like 1950 style toilet paper.

The build quality of the microphone bodies differs. The chinese mics are elegantly finished and screw together smoothly and tightly. The Russian mics are dissapointing. The silver pinted Oktava logo was laughably smeared on one body, and the heads are harder to screw on, and squeak as they are tightened. You have to screw with some care as there is a definite danger of cross threading. The Russian mics make contact through dimpled silver plated sprung contact pins, whereas the chinese mics pins are brass. The Chinese caps fit the body tightly, but Russian caps leave tiny gaps even when fully tightened.

The Sound Test

So, how do they sound? In the links bar at the side of this page you will be able to A/B blind compare a number of short recordings made with the both microphones.

These are not studio quality recordings made in designed room with $3000 pre-amps, but rather a raw microphone test made on portable recording equipment, much the same environment as they mics would be deployed by most owners.

The approach was to mount both mics within an inch (2.5cm) of each other on a T-bar and played acoustic guitar, double bass, shaker and voice. The mics were then recorded directly into a Tascam digital recorder, no external pre-amp, no compression, no Eq (apart from the bass which is rolled off at 6dB below 225Hz). Then the gain was calibrated by matching the input levels against a constant 440Hz source.

The output level of the two mics was a major surprise. The Russian mic emits a much lower signal. It took an extra 6dB to 10dB of gain at the recording console to match the two microphones. Indeed the Tascam's input gain was at the limit, leading to slightly higher noise on the Russian mic recording. This doesn't mean that the mic itself was noisy - I tried it through a Mindprint pre-amp and all was well.

The voice recordings were made with the T-bar horizontal and both mics covered with a Pop-screen. One recording demonstrates the proximity effect with the mics at 3" (8cm) distance, and the other a normal distance at around 10" (25cm).

The guitar recordings were made with the T-bar vertical, at a distance of about 10" (25cm) from the 12th fret. The guitar was my old Italian EKO, which is an instrument with a rather light bass end, hence the rather metallic bass strings in the recordings - the guitar really sounds like that.

The bass is a problem instrument. It almost always records "boomy" in small rooms (Hence the roll off EQ). I was interested to hear if either mic lessened the effect. The bass was recorded at a distance of about 6", T-horizontal, with the mics aimed at the bottom of the fingerboard. I also closed the f-holes with a handy pair of socks, to reduce boom.

Finally there a couple of recordings to test the omni-directional cap, first guitar and then shaker.

I've uploaded the tests as a set of normalized MP3 and the original unnormalized WAV files. Since the MP3s are quite a bit louder than the WAVs, keep your volume control to hand. For a realistic listening test you should download the WAV recordings and test them on good speakers. The MP3s will inevitably introduce artifacts and so are provided for audition purposes.

Take a listen. When you are ready, click here to learn the identity of microphones A and B.

   Mic A, Cardioid

   Mic B, Cardioid

   Mic A, Omnidirectional

   Mic B, Omnidirectional