With the MD421 Kompakt, we’ve essentially got an updated model that fulfils all my 421 fantasies AND sounds just as good as before
Straight up, I’ve advocated (and got warnings on social media) for the torture and/or public shaming of whoever the 20th century genius was who designed the ‘ejector’ clip for the Sennheiser MD421 mic series.
Have you got the mic perfectly placed? Great! Shall we adjust it just a little for perfect pick up? Easy! Have you just bumped the clip switch and the mic has rocketed off the stand and into a drum stand, denting the grill? Sure have!
Come 1998 and Sennheiser updated their vintage-looking, all rounder mic that has become a standard on toms, brass, and is a fill in for pretty much any dynamic-requiring situation, to the sleeker MD421-II, and in all their German-manufacturing wisdom the olde clip remained the only way to affix this precarious piece to a mic stand.
Until now! Someone listened to not just the incredible output of this mic, but to the studio engineers who toil with this piece on a daily basis and recrafted the damn clip to a standard swivelling piece.
Then they removed the rear rotating bass roll-off switch that has a habit of getting noisy after a few decades (and that no one *really* uses anyway), and as a final act of pity upon the strugglers reduced the length of this thing by about a third, so now it can easily be nestled amongst the array of percussive detritus that drummers like to cart about.
So they’ve shrunk it huh? Doesn’t that affect the audio quality? Well, take a quick squiz at the frequency response graph and you’ll see that it’s still got the same top end bump that the MD421s have always had, that somehow always made it sound pretty great on whatever you point it at.
But looking at graphs doesn’t truly tell you that much, and every audio conspiracy kook claims that the companies doctor these graphs anyway. So let’s string it up and see how it sounds.
Comparing this thing with a vintage MD421-N beige number, and a more modern MD421-II I’m having a hard time telling the difference on toms and horns.
The top end across all three sits in the right spot for a wee presence bump, whilst low end is round and captured faithfully, with just enough roll off to dodge the ultra low-end garbage.
The ‘N’ always feels like it sounds ‘older’ but that’s probably because it looks that way, and I guess the components are about 30 years wiser than the ‘II’ model.
So where does the Kompakt sit amongst these precarious monoliths? I reckon in a pretty decent position somewhere between the two. Close your eyes and you probably won’t hear much difference.
Throw your tracks into a mix and the Kompakt will nestle right into that spot where you’ve been hearing toms sit for the last 60-odd years thanks to the 421 family.
So, we’ve essentially got an updated model that fulfils all my 421 fantasies AND sounds just as good as before. A German-made cardioid picking up 30hz to 17k with great rejection at 180° and can take big SPL? Check!
And as a final boon the damn thing is built to sit upon both kinds of modern mic stands without the need for an adaptor. Woohoo!
How much is this modern realignment? Even cheaper than MD421-II that you were just about to buy.
The MD-421 Kompakt retails for $499 Australian but ya can probably snag one for around $420.
Check out Sennheiser website for more info.
Reviewed by Owen Penglis.
