Nice microphone for studio vocals or instruments - favourable results with instruments such as harps, percussion etc
We believe this to be a Geloso product, a major Italian manufacturer/supplier of electronic components and complete equipment in the 1950’s, started by John Geloso in 1929.
This M58 appears to be an upmarket version of the standard Geloso range of microphones with a far better body build, heavy duty mounting and capsule supports etc
We have included two photographs (extremely hard to find) of the M60 which appears to be exactly the same as the M58 but in a gold finish - looks pretty damn good!
These photographs came from the music school site www.sonismusicschool.com based in New York - there are more photographs at their site.
LINEA Dynamic Microphone
Model: M58
Made In Italy
Bullet style body
Body is all metal – diecast
Chrome plate finish
Dynamic capsule is seated in a nice rubber shock/support ring
Output impedance 250 Ohms – however plenty of space inside to fit an impedance matching transformer if desired
Frequency response: 60Hz – 14Khz
Balanced audio output
Microphone support stand female thread mount, which is also tilt adjustable through 90 degrees
ON-OFF switch
HARDWIRED Output – not a standard male XLR socket at the base but instead has a cable is 6 metres long which is terminated with a standard XLR 3 pin male plug.
Audio is stock standard with hot to pin 2 and audio minus to pin 3, pin 1 being ground.
The ON-OFF switch is wired to short the audio output (pin 2 & 3 together) so there will be no nasty pops
Cool looking microphone with some interesting heritage. Our sound engineer liked to play around with many different mics and this was one of his "babies"
Our sound engineer's comment about the sound was that it was "full and rich", not "peaky" and very highly directional (side lobes are dramatically smaller than the front lobe), move off to the sides the sensitivity drops off dramatically, great for instrument miking - particularly percussion.
A nice low cost microphone for those who like to experiment with their mics.
TESTING:
Because it has been sometime since the audio post facilites were operational, I have removed the original custom plug (it was previously wired for XLR 4 pin) fitted a standard 3 pin XLR Male and also cleaned up the ON-OFF switch contacts (open frame and the contacts needed a clean up)
Plugged it into my audio gear and I can confirm that there is nice clean audio, reasonable sensitivity and it certain is very directional, if I move off to the side (even slightly) the sensitivity drops off dramatically.
Audio is "nice" (love the sound of my own voice) - I would have liked to do some frequency response tests but I don't have much of my audio gear left now so it has been a vocal test only.
The frequency response figures quoted above came from another site which was advertising this microphone.
ON-OFF switch works smoothly but I noticed the contacts, even after cleaning, are not reliable - sometimes it kills the audio and sometimes not. The most important thing when operating the ON-OFF switch is that there are no pops/noise, its just a nuisance. On the other hand, when ON, no contact issues at all (understandable because the switch merely shorts the audio hot and cold signal together.
Weight: 650g with the cable
Mic measurements:
120mm front to back
33mm diameter body
Dynamic capsule diaphragm diameter: 25mm
COSMETIC CONDITION:
No damage, dents etc
Clean
Some light “speckles” to the top chrome finish in some areas – not serious
These are rare, last one I saw online was sold recently for US$320!!! Perhaps there is something about this mic I am missing, I don't feel it is worth that much although I did see some online suggestions that Linea used 3rd party sourced capsules sometimes e.g AKG capsules but I cannot confirm this is the case with the M58
